It’s 2024 now, why is the audio quality of phone calls still so bad?

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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

42 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Maybe because you live in America ?
We have voice-over-wireless in some europe countries, the phone routes the call through internet via the provider
I also believe we have different encoding formats based on signal type and device, gsm/hdspa/3g/4g/5g etc.

So tehcnically, if you have a good infrastructure to begin with, there is little cost factor for companies
to allow you to use better audio.

ELI5 if i’m wrong

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