What Is HD Voice Calling? The Guide for Small Businesses
Corey McCraw is a staff writer covering VoIP and Unified Communications. Corey has over a decade of experience in marketing, tech writing, and corporate communications and has even penned content for the former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative.
Marianne is a staff writer at Fit Small Business who covers business phone services, VoIP, and video conferencing tools.
This article is part of a larger series on VoIP.
High definition (HD) voice calling is a voice technology that delivers an enhanced calling experience using wideband audio technology and noise cancellation. It reduces background noise and provides clearer audio connections. Today, HD voice calling is a standard feature in most leading business phone systems. Keep reading below to learn more about what HD voice calling is, how it works, and its benefits for small businesses.
How HD Voice Calling Works
HD voice calling uses a codec, which is computer code, to compress, or encode, audio content into data packets before sending it to a receiving server. The receiving server will then decode, or open the packets, to decompress the audio content.
Standard low-definition voice calls have call frequencies between 300 Hz and 3.4 kHz, while HD voice calling’s wideband audio transmits at a range of 50 Hz to 7 kHz (or higher). This is much closer to the human voice frequency, which is between 75 Hz and 14 kHz.
HD Voice Calling Benefits for Businesses
HD voice calling is one of the must-have business phone features beneficial to businesses that need to drive productive conversations with their clients. In this era of remote working, HD voice calling offers several chief benefits for employees working from different locations and relying on conference calls.
Here are the benefits of including HD voice calling in your business communications:
Calls Are Clearer & Crispier
HD voice calling improves the overall voice and sound quality. With HD voice, the distanced and robotic sound associated with standard calls is replaced with more natural-sounding audio. The broader audio range has the ability to capture clearer speech and content, significantly reducing misunderstandings in phone conversations.
More Accurate Voicemail Transcriptions
Voicemail transcription service is a useful feature for those who don’t have time to deal with phone calls. However, the limitations of voice-to-text technology have affected the quality of transcriptions because of low-quality audio conversations. With HD voice calling, it aids the voice-to-text translator to achieve a level of accuracy, fully translating the voicemail into text format in real time.
Fewer Call Drops
HD voice calling improves the quality of phone communication, minimizing distractions or noises. As a business owner, it’s important to be aware that your voice call quality directly affects your business. Customers get annoyed and frustrated when the conversation sounds garbled or keeps cutting out, leading to a higher rate of dropped calls and interrupted connections.
Enhanced Customer Service
Poor sound quality steals employees’ time that would be otherwise spent on assisting important customer queries. Unfortunately, remote working has exposed employees to frustrating experiences, such as misunderstanding someone’s tone and mishearing important instructions. HD voice calling solves these issues by bringing the right technology tool to employees who need to communicate clearly over phone lines.
Factors to Consider Before Investing in HD Calls
Despite the multiple advantages of HD voice calling to everyday business communications, it also comes with a few drawbacks in terms of cost and resources. Before investing in a voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) provider promoting HD voice calling capabilities, here are a few reasons HD voice calling may not be worth the upgrade:
It Requires a Fast Internet Connection
One way to enjoy the benefits of HD voice calling is to have a high-speed internet connection. HD voice has a higher data usage than a standard quality phone call, so you have to ensure your internet connection is strong enough to support multiple phone calls simultaneously. Unfortunately, not all small businesses have high broadband access because of budget constraints or geographical location.
Compatibility Issues
HD voice provides clear voice calls when both the caller and the recipient are using HD voice-enabled phones. This means you have to make sure your desk phone or mobile device is compatible with HD voice, or you won’t be able to make crystal-clear voice calls. A device is considered HD voice compatible if it works over 4G or 5G long term evolution (LTE) networks.
Pricing Packages Are Expensive
Getting a phone system for your business requires a significant investment. Mobile carriers and business phone systems require more digital signal processing power to enable HD phone calls. This incurs additional costs to its users in the form of more expensive pricing plans.
HD-ready VoIP Providers
While there are plenty of VoIP service providers available, not all of them offer HD voice capabilities. To help you find which service provider offers HD voice calling, we rounded up the best HD-ready VoIP providers:
RingCentral is a cloud-based platform for managing communications across various channels, such as voice, video, and text. Plans start at $29.99 per user, per month for unlimited domestic calls, business texting, team messaging, and HD voice calling. It is one of our best business phone systems with robust call management features that match businesses with high call volume.
Nextiva is a business phone software that offers powerful communication features for scaling businesses. Subscribing to the Professional plan provides access to unlimited conference calls and video conferencing. HD voice calling and unlimited domestic calls are available on all plan tiers.
Phone.com is a VoIP phone system that offers metered and unlimited subscriptions to its users. Standard features include HD voice, audio conferencing, caller ID, and call handling rules. The entry-level plan starts at $14.99 per user, per month, making it one of the most budget-friendly business phone systems.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are the requirements for HD voice calling?
To get HD voice calling, a user should have an HD voice-enabled device and a business phone provider that supports HD voice calling. Lastly, the user should be in an HD voice coverage area.
Does HD voice call work on 3G networks?
No. HD voice calling through voice over LTE (VoLTE) technology relies on 4G and 5G networks. Legacy 2G and 3G networks don’t provide enough bandwidth to support HD calls.
How do I improve voice quality without HD calling?
Mobile apps, quality microphones, and noise-canceling headphones help improve the voice quality of phone calls. While they’re not a sufficient substitute for HD voice technology, they do help improve voice quality.
Bottom Line
HD voice calling brings an enhanced calling experience to your business by providing clearer, natural-sounding voice quality and reduced background noise to your calls. With HD voice, clearer conversations lead to higher team productivity, increased customer satisfaction rates, and better sales performance.
Now you know what HD voice is, discover the difference it makes by subscribing to a business phone provider that offers HD voice calling capabilities.
