Metrico Wireless Offers Technology, Handset Agnostic Evaluation Solution

First Performance Evaluation Solution for Mobile HD Voice

Updated: April 10, 2011

FREDERICK, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mobile voice is about to be transformed, because mobile carriers around the globe, such as Orange, are just beginning to launch high definition (HD) voice. Mobile HD voice allows crystal clear reception in wireless calls and delivers significantly better quality than that delivered by today’s landline networks.

Mobile operators expect HD voice to help them attract new customers, reduce churn and increase average revenue per user (ARPU). In fact, ABI Research predicts that there will be more than 400 million mobile HD voice users by 2015.

But the mobile carriers offering these services have a problem; currently, there is no way to thoroughly evaluate the quality of new wideband voice offerings on different mobile devices.

Fortunately, Metrico Wireless is about to change that, upgrading its Nomad call performance and voice quality evaluation product to support POLQA, the voice quality testing technique that’s been selected to support the new ITU-T voice quality testing standard, P.863. Incorporating the POLQA, or “Perceptual Objective Listening Quality Analysis,” standard into Nomad will allow Metrico to offer its customers the most cutting-edge evaluation of voice quality in HD Voice, 3G and 4G/LTE devices.

“Metrico has always been on the cutting edge of device performance evaluation. We offered the first product that supported the simultaneous evaluation of both call performance and voice quality. And we were the first to offer one product that supports the evaluation of any device, independent of technology,” said Jeff Horner, vice president of product development at Metrico Wireless. “Now we’re the first to expand our audio quality evaluation solution to support not only existing narrowband voice but also wideband voice applications.”

Many existing mobile voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) applications, such as Skype, actually already use wideband voice codecs. But until POLQA was adopted as an industry standard, there was no truly accurate way to test these applications. Earlier voice quality evaluation solutions were based on the PESQ standard, which was not optimized to test wideband voice quality.

POLQA, in contrast, was specifically designed to support the evaluation of HD/wideband/super wideband voice quality and can be used to assess several key metrics that PESQ could not, such as noise reduction, voice quality enhancement, time warping, and filtering and spectral shaping – as well as recordings made at an ear simulator.

Once Metrico incorporates POLQA into its Nomad solution, its customers can use Nomad to more accurately evaluate both narrowband and wideband voice applications. In fact, using the upgraded Nomad solution, mobile operators and manufacturers can collect and assess many new call quality metrics.

For instance, using Nomad’s new Delay Module, mobile operators can evaluate the end-to-end delay of any VoIP or standard voice call and can easily compare the quality of their own wideband voice solutions against solutions like Skype – or see which HD-enabled phones support the best quality. They can also more thoroughly evaluate mobile-to-mobile calling and mobile originated calls, without paying termination fees.

“When customers listen to mobile HD voice for the first time, they often say it’s like going from watching a black and white analog television to an HD digital television,” said Horner. “Once again, mobile carriers and manufacturers can count on Metrico to help them stay ahead of the curve. Metrico is dedicated to helping its customers evaluate the actual end user experience using the most up-to-date tools available today. With our upgraded Nomad solution, our customers can ensure the quality of their HD voice solutions live up to their customers’ expectations.”

Metrico will incorporate POLQA into Nomad, its market-leading call performance and voice quality evaluation product, in Q410. Existing Metrico customers can easily upgrade to Metrico’s state-of-the-art Nomad product.

Designed to support both lab and field-based evaluations, Metrico’s Nomad audio performance evaluation solution already reduces the high labor costs and long hours traditionally associated with performance testing, as it eliminates the need for technicians to manually dial hundreds, or even thousands, of calls to evaluate call performance. In addition, Nomad supports the simultaneous evaluation of both call performance and voice quality on any mobile device.

In fact, Nomad enables mobile device manufacturers, mobile operators and component manufacturers to reduce the time it takes to measure the performance of mobile devices prior to commercial launch by as much as 50 percent.

About Metrico Wireless

Metrico Wireless Inc. is pioneering the evaluation of wireless devices pre- and post-launch through analysis of user experience metrics such as audio, data, streaming video and location-based information. With its Fit4Launch and Mobile Experience (M.E.) programs, Metrico uses its patent-pending technologies to help ensure that devices get to market quickly and cost-effectively. In addition, Metrico enables devices to deliver the optimal user experience when users turn them on for the first time and to maintain their expected performance in the months following launch. Metrico’s customers include wireless carriers and handset makers such as AT&T, Motorola, Nokia, Research in Motion and T-Mobile. Additional information on the company may be found at www.metricowireless.com.

Featured Research
Related Articles