Kai Havukainen, Head of Product Management at Nokia Technologies, explains how Immersive Voice and Audio Services (IVAS) are changing the way we experience phone calls. This new codec, developed by 3GPP, adds spatial audio to calls, making it sound more like real life rather than the flat sound of traditional phone calls. This means you could hear the birds singing or the ambient noise of a concert while talking to someone on the phone.
Although the technology is now standardized, Havukainen notes that it will take time for it to become common. Nokia has been actively working on ensuring its smooth rollout and adoption. While consumers can look forward to a richer experience, businesses and industries will also benefit, particularly in areas like remote assistance and conference calls.
Steve Saunders:
Kai, what exactly are IVAS or Immersive Voice and Audio Services?
Kai Havukainen:
Well, it's a new codec by 3GPP and it defines what the future of voice call feels like, and it really brings spatial audio, like what we hear now around us, to phone call instead of the current monophonic audio experience is what the phone calls until now have always been.
Steve Saunders:
How long do you think it'll be before IVAS becomes commonplace?
Kai Havukainen:
Well, it's now standardized. Just last year in the 3GPP release [inaudible 00:00:42], and Nokia has been one of the key collaborators there. And we are now partnering with many companies to actually ensure that the smooth rollout and market adoption will happen in next few years. And just last year actually, Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark already made the first IVAS call to the Finland Ambassador of Digitalization and New Technology and demonstrated this capability. So it's already possible, but the market adoption of course requires some time.
Steve Saunders:
Kai, how can we expect IVAS to be applied in the real world?
Kai Havukainen:
Well, for consumers, for example, the simple use case would be just sharing situation in environment where you are. Think about hiking in the forest bird singing around you, or you on your concert, you call your friend and they can actually feel like they are with you. In enterprise domain, conference calls are obviously good use case and then industrial, that's a very interesting one where you could use it for remote monitoring, remote assistance when you can actually hear the situation fully on the other side and understand what's going on there.