Voice story
Decades of audio and voice communications technology development has brought us here: at the first steps of the next giant leap with the IVAS (Immersive Voice and Audio Services) codec.
Nokia and Bell Labs: Over hundred years of audio and technology innovations
1920s—1930s: foundational work in telephony and audio (Bell Labs)
1925 - Establishment of Bell Telephone Laboratories: Central R&D hub for AT&T and Western Electric.
1927 - First Transatlantic telephone call: enabled intercontinental voice communication.
1928 - The vocoder was the first major effort to encode speech electronically and conserve bandwidth in transmission. Later used especially by the music industry.
1930s - Wideband audio research: Early high-fidelity sound concepts explored.
1940s—1950s: birth of modern electronics (Bell Labs)
1947 - Invention of the transistor: Revolutionized electronics and portable audio.
1950 - Differential Pulse-Code Modulation (DPCM), a significant step in digital audio compression.
1952 - Speech recognition/synthesis: Early AI audio interaction studies.
1950s - Touch-tone dialing: Development of DTMF and improved microphones.
1960s—1970s: digital and signal processing era (Bell Labs)
1970s - Adaptive Differential Pulse-Code Modulation (ADPCM), enhancing speech compression techniques
1980s: Nokia - rise in mobile communications
1981 - Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT): First analog cellular system with voice.
1980s - Development of GSM: Move toward digital voice communication.
1990s: GSM and digital audio for mobile
1991 - First GSM call: Clearer, digitally encoded voice.
1994 - Nokia tune: Iconic mobile ringtone.
1995 - In collaboration with Université de Sherbrooke, Nokia develops the Enhanced Full Rate (EFR) codec, improving GSM voice quality.
1999 - Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) codec co-developed by Nokia, becoming the standard for 3G voice services.
2000s: high-quality mobile audio and research
2001 - Introduction of the Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) codec co-developed by Nokia, offering enhanced speech quality for mobile communications.
2006 - Nokia XpressMusic: Enhanced music playback on phones.
2010 - HD Voice: Wideband audio for clearer calls.
2010s: immersive audio and smart technologies
2014 - Standardization of the Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) codec by 3GPP, with significant contributions from Nokia, offering superior audio quality and robustness for mobile communications.
2015 – Unveiling of the OZO VR camera, capable of capturing 360-degree video and spatial audio, pushing boundaries in immersive media.
2017 - The OZO camera is discontinued but Nokia continues to develop OZO Audio technologies, focusing on spatial audio capture and playback for various devices.
2020s: spatial audio, AI, and 6G audio visions
2024 - Nokia being a significant contributor again, standardization of the 3GPP Immersive Voice and Audio Services (IVAS) codec with the new MASA format specifically designed for smartphone form factors and use cases.
2024 - Nokia’s former President & CEO Pekka Lundmark conducts the world's first immersive phone call using the IVAS codec.
2025 and onwards - 6G Vision: 6 degrees-of-freedom audio, audio holography and machine hearing.
