We have the technology required to record, transmit and play high fidelity audio and video. Why are the phone calls’ quality still so bad as if we’re talking over walkie-talkies?
In other words, we definitely \*can\* have high quality phone calls. Why is it that the carriers (or whoever responsible for building the underlying infrastructure) choose to not make this improvement yet?
Edit: the question came up after finishing a call with my bank. I’m pretty sure the CS on the other end used a landline phone and the audio quality was no bueno. Maybe my impression on the phone calls’ quality can have some recency bias involved. So please correct me if phone call qualities aren’t that bad in your region or in your experience .
In: Technology
The UK is currently retiring its old landline telephone network, and replacing it with an IP telephony system.
Instead of sending calls down your twisted-pair telephone wires as 8 KHz analogue signals (alongside higher-frequency digital broadband signals), the 8 KHz analogue band is being scrapped, and phone calls are being sent down the TCP/IP broadband channel the same as your home Internet connection.
This requires a new telephone handset, which is able to interface with your home broadband router. These are cordless DECT phones (using the relatively modern Cat-IQ standard) than indeed supports crystal clear voice audio. The audio quality is frankly excellent.
Why you still experience poor audio quality on a call with this setup is down to several reasons:
* You could be using an old analogue phone that’s plugged into the modern home router’s legacy phone jack. This downgrades the new phone line to an analogue signal inside your house’s last few feet (but still digital to the exchange)
* The person you’re calling has an old handset, or an old telephone line
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