The gap in voice quality between a telephone call and meeting in-person has not decreased since the 1930's. This fact is no less surprising than had a iPhone dropped from the sky as the Bell Laboratories researchers made the decisions establishing 300Hz to 3300Hz as the network frequency response 80 years ago. It does not seem unreasonable to wonder why voice networks remain constrained by a technology decision made a decade before the invention of the transistor.
Telephone voice quality impairments have the same effect as a hearing impairment. Telephone network voice quality limitations are telephone hearing disabilities. The typical telephone connection gives callers the same hearing impairment as the one suffered by the typical 70 year old construction worker in the loss of the frequencies above 4000Hz associated with consonant sounds. Even the retired construction worker will hear more of the frequencies below 500Hz, essential for recognizing voices and establishing an emotional connection, than people using telephones.
Asserting telephone call quality is "good enough" falls into the same denial category as the refusal to wear a hearing aid. A telephone conversation serves the exact same purpose as a conversation in-person. Hearing and voice quality impairments destroy the ability to communicate - understanding. The proliferation of the word "what?"
and adaptations callers apply speak for themselves. No one feels compelled to use the military phonic alphabet (alpha, bravo, etc) when spelling their name in-person.
Audiologists perform hearing tests to assess the threshold of hearing for the seven octaves between 125Hz and 8000Hz. The equivalent audiogram in the case of a telephone call would show severe to profound hearing loss in four of the seven octaves. These limitations were well understood by the lead researcher who lead the voice quality studies at Bell Labs in the 30's. Dr. Harvey Fletcher advocated for a full orthotelephonic response (i.e. capturing the full voice spectrum), but AT&T management balked at the cost of this approach given the state of technology at the time.
Voice communication remains a key input enabling the 70 trillion dollar global economy. It makes no sense to continue suffering a telephone hearing impairment given the wide availability and low cost of high definition (HD) voice alternatives today. There exists no way to reconcile the contradiction of spending millions of dollars on President Obama's transportation options and making him suffer the same telephone hearing disabilities when calling world leaders as
teenagers planning a party. The need to address a telephone hearing
disability arising from 1930's technology limitations is at least 70 years overdue.
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