HD voice service continues to make rapid strides in Africa and Asia, adding to a substantial established base in Europe and Canada. Expect a number of international IPX/HD voice interconnection announcements by the end of the year, as carriers such as Bharti Airtel (News - Alert) start to move calls between subsidiaries and to other carriers such as Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom/Orange.

Recently, Bharti Airtel declared it is providing HD voice to Africa. It announced service turn-up to Kenya, Rwanda, Malawi, and Nigeria and "aims to make HD voice a reality on the continent," said a company statement. More African HD voice launches will occur in 2013.

Bharti is the second major carrier to bring HD voice to the area, joining France Telecom (News - Alert) and its numerous deployments. Why is Africa such a hotbed for HD voice activity? In a lot of ways, Africa is the ultimate "greenfield" play -- no legacy infrastructure, clean RF spectrum, growing markets and plenty of upside. France Telecom and IBM (News - Alert) have made significant commitments to invest in African markets, so Bharti is simply going with the flow in some respects.

If you appreciate irony, here's one: Kenya has two (2) mobile carriers providing HD voice service as of March 2013. USA - one (1). Orange Kenya and Bharti Airtel are both up and running while T-Mobile just launched HD voice on its network in January. No AT&T (News - Alert) in the USA. No Sprint, after promoting HD voice as a reason to buy an HTC phone in 2012.

Over in Asia, StarHub in Singapore has become the latest mobile operator to launch HD voice service, coming as a part of its 3G network upgrade. Unlike other rollouts, StarHub says it is conducting a rolling upgrade/support for HD voice based upon its subscriber plans, with all customers to be "progressively enabled" by the third quarter of 2013.

StarHub also hinted at the future of HD voice interconnection -- and this is where I expect things to heat up quickly.

“With a growing number of mobile operators committed to rolling out HD Voice commercially, StarHub customers will be able to make high-quality international mobile calls on their HD Voice handset in the near future,” said its press release.

BT (News - Alert) Wholesale opened up a second IPX (IP Exchange) hub in Singapore to service Asia. Last year, I was skeptical at BT's rah-rah in talking up IPX, but it appears it was correct in the timing of its services push. With numerous countries in Asia getting HD voice over the past twelve months, including Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan, BT is in a good position to be a major player in the next wave of interconnection services.

And as Asian carriers are interconnecting, it is a short hop for more rapid interconnection in Europe, Africa, and between those regions and carriers.