In an interview with Mobile World Live, the head of Nokia’s licensing division outlined the potential opportunities and use cases for a technology designed to deliver 3D spatial sound to users, an approach the vendor claimed to have tested for the first time in a phone call conducted earlier this year.

Nokia Technologies head of technology licensing Jyri Huopaniemi (pictured) positioned immersive calls as having great potential across consumer and enterprise, with one “obvious” use case in the former being when people want to share experiences such as concerts.

“With this immersion, you can get the next level of sharing,” he noted, adding within the enterprise segment it was “more about enhancing capabilities in areas such as conference calling”.

Here, he pointed to the capability to “put people in different locations spatially”, with the potential this could increase the prominence of some participants, or provide more distinct separation between where the voices are coming from to ease understanding.

“On the industrial side it’s more utility applications: mission critical use cases like law enforcement or firefighters that have to respond very quickly to visual and auditory cues. If you’re able to localise those, that gives you the added improved reaction time.”

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Cellular calls can be elevated to a special immersive experience

Jyri Huopaniemi – head of technology licensing Nokia Technologies

The system Nokia is currently conducting pilots on is through an OTT software application able to run on most standard smartphones, however the executive noted the second phase of implementation would come with adoption of the 3GPP Immersive Voice and Audio Services (IVAS) codec in 5G-Advanced standards.

At that point “cellular calls can be elevated to a special immersive experience” though he anticipates that will “take some time for the pick-up”.

Spatial audio can offer the receiver of the phone or video call a better perspective of where background noises are, and give an accurate representation of where the person calling is standing.in relation to the handset

For example, if a recipient has headphones on and the person making the call walks around their device it will sound to the listener as if they are moving around them.  

Industry interest
Huopaniemi said Nokia had been “actively piloting, negotiating and discussing” this technology with “operators, handset makers and service providers”, reporting there is “definite interest”, though “take up of the standard will, of course, require time”.

He played down any concerns about network strain from the use of these voice services, noting “typically the first or second question an operator will ask” is about the bit rate used.

“When the codec was standardised, it used similar bit rate profiles to the previous one”, which was enhanced voice services (EVS), a system designed for VoNR and VoLTE.

He noted with a bit rate of around 13.2kb/s you can “create a special experience”, but stressed this could be increased to ease advanced use cases such as using a smartphone to replicate audio from a live concert.

Huopaniemi is hopeful operators and, potentially, other players in the ecosystem will identify enhanced voice services as a way to differentiate, given the humble phone call “has not seen a lot of invention in the last few years on the operator side”.

“There is an opportunity to provide more in the voice channel,” he enthused.

Looking to the future with elements such as head tracking, extended reality was an “obvious” potential use case.

The 3GPP IVAS codec was developed by a consortium of 13 companies, with Nokia positioning itself as a leader in the standardisation efforts.

Other players credited by the 3GPP as being involved include Ericsson and Huawei, alongside audio specialist Dolby, Qualcomm, NTT and Orange.