Recently there was some controversy over the need for voice quality improvements in mobile telephony. The Verge had choice quotes from market experts such as these:

• “There’s not a great deal of objective data out there that indicates that people will pay more for that voice quality”
• “…is that market opportunity worth all of the work and effort to get there?”
• “I’m not sure that’s where many of the operators will place their money right now.”

Perhaps they weren’t thinking about authentication and fraud.

The New Zealand Inland Revenue launched voice authentication last November.

It’s called voice ID and it allows us to recognise who you are – just by your voice. Because each person has a unique voice pattern, once you are enrolled all you need to do is speak your IR number when you call and we will know that it is you.

[…]

Enrolling for voice ID is easy and will only take 2 minutes. Just call 0800 257 843 and make sure you have your IRD number handy. It will work best if you call us from somewhere quiet.

The “somewhere quiet” part has proved to be a challenge. Stuff says the service has quickly gained popularity but has uncovered issues in sound quality.

More than 400,000 people have registered to use an Inland Revenue system that checks their voice to confirm their identity, since that became possible in November.

[…]

Social Development Ministry regional commissioner Gagau Annandale Stone said last year that the biggest challenge had been when clients called on mobile phones, because those phones’ poorer quality and background noise made checks less reliable. About 38 per cent of calls to its contract centre were from mobiles.

Authentication checks less reliable? Sounds like a market for more reliability. Stuff mentions that HD Voice could solve that issue for NZ just as South Korea becomes the first country in the world to announce availability.

In line with its previous efforts, SK Telecom will be launching HD Voice on August 8, 2012, the world’s first high definition voice call service over LTE that can dramatically push up audio quality. HD Voice uses Adapted Multi-Rate Wide Band (AMR-WB) codec, which offers much upgraded 3G speech coding, and 23.85 Kbps transmission bandwidth, 2.2 times wider than that of 3G voice call, thereby transmitting the previously-inaudible low and high sound waves, and improving voice quality by 40% compared to that of 3G.

Note that SK Telecom is offering HD quality to customers at the same rate per second as 3G service. The software for HD will be bundled into new Samsung Galaxy S III mobiles and existing ones can get an upgrade.

The South Korean telecom also has completed nearly 100% coverage of the nationwide population with their LTE rollout and started Voice over LTE (VoLTE). Running a VoLTE network instead of circuit-switched voice will also improve sound quality.

Suddenly I miss my Helio phone (cutting-edge tech deployed by SK Telecom into the US market).

Now it seems even NZ will see HD Voice before it reaches the quality-doubting US market. Several years ago Orange posted a video simulating the difference with HD Voice: