Cell phone question

Ed Huntress · 2016-07-15T15:40:47+00:00

Here's one for the digital experts: I do a lot of interviews in which the other party is on a cell phone, and I think I've noticed a difference over time in how they work. If the call is conducted at a busy time of day, and there are clear signs of bandwidth becoming limited, it used to be that there would be a corresponding number of dropouts in the conversation. Lately (and I call mostly the Chicago and Los Angeles areas) I've detected something different: it sounds like they're just reducing the audio bitrate. It starts to sound like it's coming from a cheap microphone. Does anyone know?