'Immersive' phone calls are the future of communication, Nokia says. But what are they?

(NEXSTAR) – The CEO of Nokia, the Finland-based telecommunications giant, claims to have just participated in the world’s first “immersive” voice and audio call — a milestone the company is calling “the biggest leap forward in the live voice calling experience since the introduction of monophonic telephony.”

The call — made between Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark and Stefan Lindström, Finland’s Ambassador for Digitalization and New Technologies — reportedly featured what Nokia and Lindström are calling a “three-dimensional sound” experience marked by real-time spatial audio, rather than audio that sounds to be coming from just one place (e.g., a single speaker).

Both Lundmark and Lindström remarked on the enhanced calling experience, with Lundmark saying it “takes you to the caller’s environment” and Lindström adding that their communication felt “more lifelike and engaging," per a Nokia news release.

In addition to enhanced voice calls, Nokia claims the new technology will have applications for the metaverse and other “extended reality” services. An executive cited by Reuters said the tech can also be useful during conference calls, allowing the listener to determine which participant is speaking based on the direction of their voice.

"We have demonstrated the future of voice calls,” Lundmark said, per the Nokia press release.

The call, announced Monday, was made possible using Immersive Voice and Audio Services (IVAS) technology, Nokia said. Nokia did not develop the technology on its own, but rather via a “public collaboration” with a dozen other companies.

Nokia, however, said it had been a “major” contributor to the development of the IVAS codec standard,  specifically. The company added that the call also utilized a proprietary Nokia technology in order to be transmitted across a public 5G network, rather than a test mobile network.

In moving away from monophonic sound, the new IVAS technology appears to be following in the evolutionary footsteps already treaded by other audio industries. Mono sound, for example, was the precursor to stereophonic technology and stereophonic sound systems, which have increasingly provided listeners with equipment that sounds as if they’re being bombarded with audio from different angles, rather than a single, compressed source.

Techies looking forward to similar features in their smartphones will likely have to wait a while, though: The IVAS consortium's "immersive" technology is being developed as part of new 5G Advanced Standard network, which won't be in standard usage for a few years, Reuters reported.