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
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If you have a modern mobile calling another modern mobile, the call quality can be amazing. I call my wife on her google pixel 7 from my google pixel 8 we’re on the same network in the UK (an mvno called Giffgaff). Sometimes we use Meta’s *Whatsapp calling and that’s great too*
I don’t have the details handy but let’s say you are using a modern codec as detailed[ here](https://www.sip.us/blog/latest-news/what-is-the-best-codec-for-voip-and-how-to-find-it/) you’ll have a great call experience.
If the circuit can’t support the data rate, it drops back and back to the older codecs.
CS centres have various redundancy features and resilience elements configured in as a call is hopped around the providers internal cloud so say your call gets routed to a handler in India and the handler then puts you through to a help desk in the same metropolitan area as you, when the systems are configured badly that audio is still routing through India which won’t help if you are in Austin TX
CS telephony circuits are among the worst in the world.
Phone call quality can be quite good, especially with end to end digital connections. Some companies, especially established older companies like banks, have old shitty phone systems, which degrade the audio quality of people using them (some still use FM radio as hold music).
Streaming audio and video suffers from the same problem as phone calls. Live streams are not universal clear and high quality. We can send *prerecorded* audio and video at excellent quality consistently because we can resend data that failed to arrive. You can’t do that when the data stream must be real time.
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“HD telephony” is already Standard on most landlines and mobile networks, basically since phones were transitioned from analogue to digital
One word: Ma Bell. The more you look into the weirdness of phone calls. The more you find AT&T to blame. I’m not talking about the more frustrating part. I’m talking about the 1900-1980s AT&T
For example Frequency shifting key is why a lot of on hold music sounds so terrible. [Frequency Shifting Key](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-shift_keying)
My phone call quality has markedly improved from software improvements. Many times in fact. Google / Android uses a lot of strategies to improve call quality, from background noise rejection, volume balancing, tools to make the voice sound more like normal voice and less robotic. Usually it calls them “HD” features. It’s never going to be as good as someone speaking into a $1000 studio mic, but considering they’re speaking into a tiny little builtin mic on the bottom of what is essentially a computer chip with a screen, I think it’s pretty fucking great.
I think you should speak for yourself in this regard… I’m really happy with all the improvements I’ve seen considering I call home every week for a decade and can see in real time the improvement.
Oh yes there is. But phone and carriers needs to support it. I have HD calls on nearly every call using LTE/5G, unless I call a carrier that doesn’t support it – or is out in the boonies
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