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Nokia calls in with immersive news

Stefan Lindström, Finnish Ambassador of Digitalization and New Technologies, Pekka Lundmark, Nokia’s president and CEO, and Jenni Lukander, president of Nokia Technologies, made the world-first voice call.

Nokia / Facebook

Nokia has made the world’s first cellular call using the immersive voice and audio services (IVAS) codec technology.

Part of the upcoming 5G Advanced standard, the codec transforms the voice call experience between any connected devices by replacing monophonic sound with real-time, three-dimensional spatial sound, also paving the way toward enhanced reality and metaverse applications.

CEO Pekka Lundmark had the honour to make the historic call and demonstrate the distinctive acoustic dimensions enabled by the codec to Stefan Lindström, Finnish Ambassador of Digitalisation and Technology.

“[The technology] improves the richness and quality of the call, and the three-dimensional sound experience makes interaction more lifelike and engaging, bringing a wealth of new benefits to personal and professional communication,” attested Lindström.

Nokia was able to make the demonstration even though the technology has yet to be implemented in mobile networks by utilising a proprietary immersive voice technology to create the experience over a public 5G network. It described the call as “biggest leap forward in the live voice calling experience since the introduction of monophonic telephony”.

“We have demonstrated the future of voice calls,” stated Lundmark.

“This groundbreaking audio technology takes you to the caller’s environment, creating a spatial and massively improved listening experience for voice and video calls, offering significant benefits for enterprise and industrial applications.”

Nokia added that it has been a leader in the collaborative effort to standardise the codec, contributing major parts of the technology, including a smartphone-specific format.

By: Aleksi Teivainen
03.07.2024