The 4 HD Voice Questions Sprint Needs to Answer on April 29

Sprint is turning up the hype on its national HD voice rollout with an April 29 event in New York City. I'm trying to get an invitation in the hopes I might be able to get the answers to four key question on Sprint's HD voice rollout that remain unanswered at this point in time. 

First, will Sprint's Apple iPhone 5 family - the original 5, 5c, and 5s -- support HD voice as implemented on its network through Qualcomm's CDMA 1X Advanced technology?

When Sprint announced it was selling the handset on September 2012, the company response was "Sprint does not support HD voice on the iPhone at this time." (Emphasis on time). This leaves the door open for Apple to provide a software upgrade to support the Qualcomm EVRC-NW HD voice codec. If Apple isn't supporting EVRC-NW,  Wall Street should be asking Sprint why it committed to sell millions of iPhones that don't use a key feature the company is promoting.

Second, how long will Sprint support CDMA HD voice on its network? This question is important in two respects. Sprint came out big time for WiMAX, only to fold its commitment down the road. CDMA-based HD voice may not provide much benefit to the company if is going to go away in two to three phone generations; i.e., two to four years.

In addition, Sprint is the only U.S. carrier that has publicly committed to 1X Advanced HD voice -- maybe the only carrier in the world. Question number three:  Will Sprint support HD voice calls between its CDMA network and the wide worlds of GSM and Voice over LTE (VoLTE)?  It's not just an esoteric techie question since Sprint plans to rollout VoLTE on its network along with AT&T, T-Mobile US, and Verizon. 

Worldwide, mobile HD voice is AMR-WB, be it on a 3G GSM network or a 4G VoLTE network. Being able to exchange HD voice calls internationally -- hello, parent Softbank -- would be a major asset/feature, especially for enterprise callers.

Finally, will Sprint support HD voice in its voicemail and in multipoint voice conferencing? It would seem obvious to at least support the CDMA version of HD voice on/within its voice conferencing products, but I'm not willing to take anything for granted.  Sprint started selling a HD voice capable phones in the spring of 2012 and said it would be turning up service on a city-by-city basis in the fall of 2012. It took a year before the city-by-city turn ups started to happen in earnest.