HD Voices Closes Out 2013 with US Still Waiting

Three new HD voice deployments have been announced in the final days of 2013. Last week, Kuwaiti carrier VIVA announced the launch of HD voice service on its 3G network.   Orange is turning up HD voice service in Mali and La Sonatel in Senegal.  Contrast that with AT&T failing to introduce Voice over LTE (VoLTE) by the end of 2013 while Verizon still says it will turn up its HD voice service in 2014.

VIVA, like all other documented carries, said HD voice will be free to all of its customers.  The carrier said there are more than 170 handsets that support HD voice, including HTC One, Samsung Galaxy 3 and 4, and Apple's iPhone 5 and 5S.  Interestingly, VIVA says customers should get HD voice on either 3G or 4G "LTE enabled" devices.

Orange announced the twentieth launch of HD voice service this week.  The company once known as France Telecom has not issued a formal press release on its latest launches, but the company is running out of places to announce.  Orange has a total of 33 subsidiaries listed on its global website, with most of its operations distributed through Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.  It first started turning up HD voice on its 3G networks back in 2009 -- four years ago.

A bigger wave of HD voice service is coming.  The Global mobile Supplier Association (GSA) confirmed over 250 LTE networks in 93 countries had been commercially launched by the end of 2013. Only a handful have VoLTE running at this time, but every carrier will put voice over its LTE network in one form or another, either by using the standard VoLTE implementation that requires the use of HD voice or through the use of an over-the-top (OTT) voice client providing service on a best-effort basis. 

Taking HD voice inventory in the U.S., T-Mobile will formally mark one year next month on its 3G network.  Sprint may or may not have HD voice service in its CDMA 1X Advanced network, but the company took over a year after announcing HD voice service to actually start delivering it on a selective, your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine basis. 

AT&T and Verizon both made noises of either trialing and/or offering VoLTE  service by the end of the year, with the latter more cautious about its predictions. AT&T seemed to indicate it would do something HD voice-ish by the end of 2013, but nothing arrived either on a 3G upgrade or an LTE rollout. Both companies are on the record for saying they will have VolTE running nationwide by 2014, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a big adoption push happen until the fall and the holiday season;  VoLTE has proven to be elusive for Verizon to implement over the past three years.