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If the main task of telecommunication companies in the past was building a network to offer their services to as large an area as possible, now the focus is on enhancing voice quality. According to a report titled ¡°Global Mobile Mindset¡± based on a survey of 15,000 consumers from 37 countries last year, voice quality was one of the five main points that needed improvement.
SK Telecom has launched the first cell phone in Korea, and the second in the world, with noise reduction technology that makes it possible for users to talk on the phone even in the noisiest place as it blocks out background noise and allows only the voice to travel through the ether. Japan¡¯s NTT DoCoMo was the first to introduce a phone with the technology; it is manufactured by Sharp.
SK Telecom named the LG Electronics¡¯ SH-400 model, for reasons that will be obvious to some husbands, the ¡°Alibi phone,¡± and announced it will produce handsets sporting this technology by three other makers, Pantech, Samsung Electronics and Motorola.
The technology was developed by Audience, a voice processor venture based in Silicon Valley, California. Just as human ears are able to ignore sounds that are irrelevant to what they want to hear, Audience sought to do the same for sound system. Now cell phones contain the ¡°A1010¡± chip developed by Audience, which allows users to talk on the phone without being drowned out by background noise such as the din of a bar. The chip is manufactured by a Taiwanese semiconductor company TSMC.
An official at SK Telecom predicted that competition in the field will intensify as more and more customers seek cell phones with better voice quality.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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