During a news conference at the GSMA’s 2023 Mobile World Congress in Stockholm, Sweden, Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark unveiled a new technology that promises to revolutionize the live voice calling experience. Known as “immersive audio and video,” this technology enhances the quality of phone calls by providing three-dimensional sound, making interactions more realistic.
According to Lundmark, this technology represents the future of voice calls, marking a significant advancement since the first 2G call was made in 1991. Currently, smartphone calls are monophonic, resulting in compressed audio and less detailed sound. The new immersive audio technology aims to change that by offering callers a more lifelike conversation.
The call demo was conducted with Stefan Lindström, Finland’s Ambassador of Digitalisation and New Technologies, over a public 5G network using a regular smartphone. Nokia Technologies President Jenni Lukander explained that the technology is now being standardized, enabling network providers, chipset manufacturers, and handset manufacturers to integrate it into their products.
In addition to person-to-person immersive calls, this technology can enhance conference calls by separating the voices of participants based on their spatial locations. The executives at Nokia Technologies explained that most smartphones have at least two microphones to enable the implementation of this technology, transmitting real-time spatial characteristics of a call.
This immersive audio technology is part of the upcoming 5G Advanced standard. While licensing opportunities for this technology may take a few years to become widely available, Nokia executives expressed optimism about its potential applications and its ability to transform the calling experience for users.
