One by product of my recent sweep across Europe was another (independent) claim that we are about to see wideband audio capabilities on mobile phones. This rumor was specifically that SFR (mobile operator in France) will be promoting wideband audio mobile services in 2008. I reported an earlier rumor of forthcoming wideband mobile handsets here.
As a long term proponent of wideband audio, perhaps I'm grasping at straws, but this is the most significant potential service increment on the table today as it would dramatically improve the most important mobile service — voice telephony.
Today’s mobile infrastructure is capable of supporting handset-to-handset wideband audio, at a minimum, by using a protocol called transcoder free operation (TFO). Most infrastructure installed in the past 5–8 years can support TFO. The appropriate configuration bits may not be turned on, but the capability is in the network. The remaining obstacle is lack of handsets, and here the extra complexity and extra drain on battery life is very small — trivial compared to the improvement in service.
Here's hoping the rumors come true and we actually see mobile wideband audio introduced in 2008.
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