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 basic answer is people don’t want it or want to pay for it. In the limitations of a standard analog phone line is about 64kbps, a technology called ISDN was investigated to allow double capacity of a regular phone line at about 128kbps. You could use to do video calling or 2 phone calls at once or a very clear line.
People pretty much had no interest in it at the time. Didn’t fancy having to dress properly to video call, and didn’t like how their voice sounded on high data lines. They liked how regular analog lines hid defects in their voice.
Here we are today, we could make high quality microphones. But again the market demand isn’t really there for it outside of niche situations. There is less resistance to video calls today but still there is resistance to it if the person isn’t dressed up showered and whatever
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