Will Vodafone’s HD Voice bring phone calls into the 21st century?

This is a sponsored post.

Although the technology packed into our mobile phones has come on in leaps and bounds over recent years, the quality of the humble phone call is still pretty similar to how it was a decade ago.

Our smart phones may have gone through a number of wifi standards (from 802.11n to 802.11ac), bandwidth has increased massively, we have brightly-coloured displays capable of playing HD videos and teeny tiny handsets that are a tenth of the size of their ancestors, but when we take or make a call the sound quality has barely changed in years.

Of course many would argue that the reason for this is simple: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Because the GSM standard for audio calls has worked great to date. But wouldn’t it be even better if the quality of your phone calls was much more like real life? After all, Skype can do it! So shouldn’t our phones be able to as well?

After all, phone calls can be important, they can be urgent and they can be life-changing, which is made so apparent in this moving Vodafone film showing us all just how much ‘Every Second Counts’:

So if they’re such a significant part of our lives then why aren’t they at the best quality we can manage?

Well, enter Vodafone. The telecomms company is currently working on making top quality voice calling a reality by using 4G. Thanks to the increased bandwidth that 4G offers, it’s possible for ‘Voice over LTE’ – or ‘VoLTE’ for short – to happen (‘LTE’ is a technical term for 4G). It’s easier just to call it HD Voice though, like most techies do!

The way HD Voice works is that rather than make calls using your GSM capabilities, your phone will instead use 4G radio. How does that work? Well, when you’re calling someone else who is also using 4G on the same network and also on a supported phone (new phones like the iPhone 6 support it) you’ll experience HD Voice calling automatically. These newer handsets will also switch from 3G and 4G back to GSM if they need to, so if you’re in an area that doesn’t have 3G or 4G then you won’t miss out.

Vodafone already has 4G coverage across the UK in 313 cities and right now it’s committed to becoming the strongest network in Britain, which means we could be about to see a HD Voice revolution across the whole country!