Revolutionary Voice Tech Revealed: How Nokia, Vodafone, and RingCentral Are Changing Communication
ESPOO, FINLAND– FEBRUARY 26th, 2025–Nokia, along with Vodafone and RingCentral, will publicly announce Immersive Voice and Audio Services at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2025. The goal of IVAS is to change technologies involving voice communication and remote calls.
With IVAS, the audio perception of any voice service is significantly raised. As a result, users will have the ability to hear sounds in a 360-degree space. It is likely that this will change business and industrial communications, education, and even entertainment.
Take, for example, remote participants of a conference call. They will be able to hear as if they are in the same room, which will change the nature of the discussion for the better.
Head of Audio Research at Nokia Technologies, Jyri Huopaniemi believes that MWC 2023 is the right time where IVAS technology can be showcased and through the partnership with Vodafone and RingCentral, the technology can come to fruition for people to use on their devices.
Network Strategy and Engineering Director at Vodafone nadia Benabdallah cited statement noting the real world uses:
“The virtual surround sound experience possible with immersive voice can enhance business meetings, improve industrial operations in noisy locations like warehouses and transport hubs, and even improve everyday voice calls.”
RingCentral’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of Global Service Providers, Homayoun Razavi, equally noted:
“With IVAS Spatial Audio, we’re restoring the power of voice as the most natural way to connect and collaborate.”
The collaboration between 13 companies led to formulating IVAS into the 3GPP Release 18 assuming the widely usable Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) as the base. One of the most remarkable is the MASA (Metadata-Assisted Spatial Audio) format as an innovation.
This type of format, unlike those made for traditional computers, is for smartphones. It wraps an external unit that has head-tracked binaural and multi-loudspeaker playback amplifiers. These devices render the sounds as 3D and the users feel as if they are in the center within the sound.
Participants of MWC 2025 can demo IVAS at the Vodafone stand (Hall 3, Stand 3E11), the Nokia stand (Hall 3, Stand 3B20), or in the RingCentral Executive Meeting Room (12Ex, Hall 7E).
The demo will highlight multi-party teleconferencing, immersive one-on-one calls, and improved communication in high noise industrial settings.
This partnership emphasizes the collaborative effort by Vodafone, RingCentral, and Nokia to improve voice communication technology, so users may benefit from more natural sounding and engaging communication.
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