­From today, Orange customers in Romania and Moldova will be able to make HD-voice calls between the two countries. For the first time, Orange has been able to interconnect these two mobile networks with different infrastructure to ensuring end-to-end HD voice quality from one country to another.

HD Voice uses the AMR-WB (Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband) speech codec. This provides excellent audio quality due to a wider speech bandwidth of 50-7000 Hz compared to the current narrowband speech codec of 300-3400 Hz. The AMR-WB delivers significantly enhanced sound quality whilst utilising the same network resources.

"Mobile HD voice offers noticeably better audio quality, and brings a real satisfaction to Orange clients. Almost 4 million customers have switched to HD voice in 14 countries, compared to 1 million customers a year ago. This is a true commercial success and demonstrates Orange's commitment to give our customers the best mobile experience available", said Paul-François Fournier, Orange's Technocentre Executive VP.

As the world's first operator to launch HD voice in Moldova in 2009, Orange said that it is pursuing a strategy to make HD voice mobile generally accessible.

HD voice is now available on a wide range of compatible mobile phones: close to 80 models from 10 different suppliers.

Orange already offers mobile HD voice in 14 countries: Moldova, Armenia, Belgium, France (Metropolitan and Reunion), Spain (Catalonia), UK, Egypt (Cairo), Luxembourg, Mauritius, Romania, Dominican Republic, Kenya, Uganda and Jordan. Further launches in Africa and the Middle East are scheduled by the end of 2012.