That includes most human speech, but it tends to make 's' and 't' sounds muddy rather than crisp. AMR-NB (narrowband), the simplest, is supported even by 2G networks and is optimized for sounds from 300 to 3400Hz. The AMR family has a bunch of codecs, and a big part of your voice quality depends on which one your phone uses. The wideband ones (often called HD Voice) sound better, but you can't get them on all phones or calls. There are narrowband and wideband codecs. CDMA carriers, such as Sprint and Verizon, initially chose EVRC (enhanced variable rate codec).

GSM carriers, such as AT&T and T-Mobile, went with the AMR (adaptive multi-rate) family. The CDMA and GSM cell phone worlds developed different sets of codecs.

A codec is a method of encoding sound as digital data. High-quality voice calls need a good codec running over a good network. This next bit is going to be an alphabet soup. And you don't have to settle for lousy call quality. But that pattern of calling has remained basically flat for a decade, while the use of data services on phones has been skyrocketing.Īdd to that the fact that, a while ago, our carriers decided to use unlimited call-and-text packages as their base price, and make money from data packages, and you don't end up seeing a lot of marketing or excitement around voice quality.īut it turns out there's a big difference in voice quality between carriers, phones, and even calls on the same phone. Sure, in 2016-the last year we could find data for-Americans made 2.751 trillion minutes (Opens in a new window) (PDF) of wireless phone calls. The word 'phone' has become pretty misleading when it applies to our little pocket computers. The frustrating reason comes from our good old free market: Our mobile phone carriers just aren't talking to each other well.

If you think your calls sound lousy, you're probably not wrong. Hey, are you there? Can you hear me now? Mobile data networks seem to improve by leaps and bounds every year, but cell phone voice quality seems to have stood still for decades.

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