France Telecom stirred up the HD voice faithful a few weeks ago when its Orange Moldova subsidiary launched the world's first mobile HD voice service, complementing the company's HD voice broadband efforts. FT's launch foreshadows other countries and other carriers joining the mobile HD voice club over the next twelve months.  When mobile HD happens in North America is tough to say, but it is likely Moldova is going to be an interesting discussion point when it comes to FCC and Capital Hill discussions on net neutrality in the coming months.

Why did Moldova get mobile HD first? Orange Moldova's CEO cites the high quality of the country's 3G network, covering over 63 percent of the population and it has the newest infrastructure supporting the latest and greatest HSPA speeds of 14.4 Mbps. Customers will have to pay around $395 to get a Nokia 6720c phone to get HD voice and callers on both ends will either have to have the same phone – for now. FT is supporting AMR-WB as the mobile HD codec of choice, so as other phones incorporate the codec, customers will have more choices.

In addition to having the ideal infrastructure for HD, Moldova is a relatively small market with around 1.7 million Orange mobile users, so FT will be able to take its "lessons learned" in the country as it introduces HD voice services to the UK and Belgium markets by the end of 2010; the company believes that HD capable handsets will represent "the majority" of 3G handsets sold within 5 years.  BT, T-Mobile and other European carriers are expected to follow suit, so they don’t get left behind.

So what's stopping U.S. carriers from offering mobile HD voice? Well, it depends on which carrier you talk about. AT&T is playing catch-up on deploying a network robust enough to support the data-hungry demands of the iPhone, so without any incentive (i.e. another U.S. carrier deploying mobile HD service), it would like to finish that project before starting up another one. Verizon Wireless is focused on getting LTE out the door and if anyone in North America is serious about rolling out a mobile HD voice service in the next 18 months, it'll be Verizon – the company loves strategically disruptive technology (FiOS, LTE) and mobile HD would be the perfect complement to LTE. Sprint is busy backing WiMAX and walking through its financial problems while T-Mobile seems to be looking for a way to simply expand market share.

However, this doesn't mean you won't hear a lot about mobile HD in the coming months. As wireless carriers defend the status quo and fight off net neutrality, expect the FCC and congressional committees alike to ask "How come we don't have the latest and greatest like Moldova?" It'll be interesting to hear the responses.