Mobile HDVoice: Only In Canada, You Say? Pity.

Into Mobile is today reporting that Canada’s WIND Mobile is testing LTE and in the process rolling out HDVoice. The companies blog makes mention of the fact that they’ll be the first North America carrier to off HDVoice. The initial offering will be the Alcatel Tribe, an Android based handset with a full QWERTY keyboard.

I took a quick glance at Alcatel’s web site to see about the specs of the handset. Alcatel refers to the Tribe as OT-981A. Nowhere does it mention HDVoice or any of the related technologies. The manual for the handset makes specific reference to AMR-NB, QCELP and EVRC-NB codecs, which are all narrowband.

Even so, there’s little reason to doubt the veracity of the claim that WIND Mobile makes about offering HDVoice using the Tribe. It seems more likely that Alcatel’s marketing team has not yet updated the web site to reflect this reality.

For readers who are not from Canada; the title of this post references an ages-old marketing slogan for Red Rose brand tea. The advertising would always show an English person enjoying a cup of Red Rose, then remarking, “Only in Canada, you say? Pity.”