Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark (pictured) made the first call using a system claimed to deliver 3D spatial sound in real-time, a development the vendor positioned as the biggest leap forward in the live voice calling experience for years.

The conversation with Finland’s ambassador of digitalisation and new technologies Stefan Lindstrom was held over the new 3GPP Immersive Voice and Audio Services codec, which is set to be included in upcoming 5G-Advanced standards.

Lindstrom said the technology “improves the richness and quality of the call, and the three-dimensional sound experience makes interaction more lifelike and engaging, bringing a wealth of new benefits to personal and professional communication”.

Lundmark added Nokia had “demonstrated the future of voice calls”, adding “this groundbreaking audio technology takes you to the caller’s environment creating a spatial and massively improved listening experience for voice and video calls, offering significant benefits for enterprise and industrial applications”.

Nokia highlighted the ability to hear sound spatially and in real time was an improvement on the monophonic smartphone voice call experience currently available. It also tipped the advance to pave the way for enhanced extended reality and metaverse applications.

The demonstration used Nokia’s proprietary technology to produce the experience over a public 5G network. The standard has been developed by a consortium including the vendor and 12 other companies.