| 25th October - Mobile communications is on the brink of a
quantum leap in voice quality: This is made possible by AMR
Wideband (AMR, Adaptive Multi-Rate), a voice coding technology
that will, in the future, enable HiFi quality mobile phone calls.
T-Mobile and Ericsson have put the potential of AMR Wideband
to the test - with impressive results. During a field trial
in Cologne and Hamburg, the large majority of the participating
T-Mobile customers in Germany were impressed by a significant
hike in voice quality. The field trial was the first AMR Wideband
trial in the world to be conducted in a commercial mobile radio
network.
“AMR Wideband technology delivers voice quality that
was hitherto unknown. The technology therefore gives T-Mobile
an excellent chance to further improve quality from a customer
standpoint, and to boost customer satisfaction for the long
term,” says Klaus-Jürgen Krath, Vice President RAN
Engineering at T-Mobile International. “The field trial
has produced key findings from which we stand to benefit when
we deploy the technology in our network in the future.”
“An awareness of customer needs is the key to developing
successful products,” explains Fredrik Alatalo, Vice
President Mobile Core at Ericsson. “We collaborate closely
with our customers to test the latest technology standards.
This supplies us both with important information on consumer
habits.”
T-Mobile and Ericsson plan to play a key role in the further
development of the technology for improved voice quality in
mobile phone calls. They intend to coordinate with other mobile
providers and suppliers in order to bring AMR Wideband technology
to market in the year 2008.
Convincing test results
The four-week AMR Wideband field trial was held in summer
this year. Participating were 150 T-Mobile customers who make
frequent mobile calls. The Ericsson Consumer & Enterprise
Lab and Nuremberg market research institute GfK (Gesellschaft
für Konsumforschung - society for consumer research)
supported the test with a comprehensive consumer survey. Over
70 percent of participants stated that the voice quality of
their mobile phone calls had improved to a major degree. This
result tallies with information gleaned in previous Ericsson
studies. Additionally, these surveys had shown that mobile
customer satisfaction increased hand in hand with voice quality.
An important aspect from a mobile carrier standpoint was that
satisfied customers are prepared to make longer mobile phone
calls - with minutes of use volume (MoU) increasing.
Intelligent quality hike
Ericsson’s AMR Wideband is a new, standardized voice
codec (coder/decoder) for GSM and UMTS networks. The objective
in development was to improve the quality and clarity of voice
transmission in mobile radio networks to a level above that
currently achieved in fixed networks. With AMR Wideband, call
partners are still easily understood even if they speak in
a whisper or phone from locations with major background noise.
AMR Wideband also offers improved support for services such
as conference calls with several parties and the provision
of sound logos. The technology is based on a state-of-the-art
algorithm for voice compression. The bandwidth for voice transmission
is doubled without increasing requirements for transport performance
in the mobile radio networks themselves. The result is an
audible improvement in voice and sound quality.
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