Nokia has made the world’s first immersive voice and audio call over a cellular network.
Pekka Lundmark, Nokia’s president and CEO, held a live immersive audio and video call with Stefan Lindström, Finland’s ambassador of digitalisation and new technologies.
The call was enabled by the new Immersive Voice and Audio Services (IVAS) codec technology which is part of the upcoming 5G Advanced standard.
The IVAS codec technology enables live spatial audio across any connected devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets or PCs), enabling users to engage in real-life interaction with three-dimensional sound, said Nokia which described the technology as the “biggest leap forward in the live voice calling experience since the introduction of monophonic telephony audio”.
The technology could pave the way towards enhanced extended reality and metaverse applications, said Nokia.
The 3GPP IVAS codec standard has been developed by a consortium of 13 companies under the framework of the IVAS codec public collaboration.
Speaking about the technology, Pekka Lundmark, president and CEO of Nokia, said: “We have demonstrated the future of voice calls. 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.”
