Sprint is planning to bring its limited HD Voice functionality across the nation by July, CEO Dan Hesse confirmed at a conference Tuesday.
Sprint, the third largest internet carrier in the U.S., is finally taking its HD Voice feature across the country after testing it in a specific few markets so far. The carrier's CEO Dan Hesse promised Tuesday at the Oracle Industry Connect conference in Boston that Sprint's HD Voice will be available to subscribers across the nation around the first of July, according to a report by Light Reading. With this, Sprint subscribers will be able to make better quality voice calls on compatible smartphones.
Sprint originally launched HD Voice on HTC EVO 4G-compatible smartphone two years ago. The feature was well-appreciated for its extensive capabilities to virtually mute the background noise. The carrier says HD Voice offers better voice quality than a landline. It offers seven octaves of the human voice when compared to the four octaves of a typical phone.
The HD Voice roll-out was sluggish but the carrier has realized its importance and has now decided to offer it across board. Sprint recently introduced high-quality voice calling feature to Pravo, Ohio, and also promised to make it available to the customers in Trenton, New Jersey.
Though Sprint launched HD Voice in 2012, rivals like T-Mobile followed the suit with their own versions. T-Mobile introduced its HD Voice during Consumer Electronics Show last year for HTC One S, Samsung Galaxy S III and Nokia Astound smartphones. AT&T and Verizon are yet to join the bandwagon sometime this year.
During his keynote, Hesse also spoke candidly about the company's Spark 4G, which was launched in October. The Sprint Spark technology is an improved LTE network that uses a unique combination of network technologies, spectrum capacity and tri-band devices. The new technology will be able to switch network bands between 800MHz, 1.9GHz and 2.5GHz while delivering network data under Sprint's new program. The new network is deployed in major cities like including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tampa and Miami and aims to cover 100 U.S. markets soon.
Sprint currently offers over two dozen HD Voice-supportive smartphones, including some popular handsets like iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C, Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Nexus 5, HTC One and HTC One Max.
