People, there is no such thing as HD Voice

Marketing departments across the country are taking advantage of widely accepted terminology to bring relevance to their unrelatable technology - I guess not a bad idea - but it bugs me when it the terms have no correlation to the technology itself. Take Ooma's new "HD Voice" feature:

High Definition Voice (HD Voice)
Ooma is the first residential phone service to support high-definition voice technology. Compared to conventional telephones, Ooma HD Voice doubles the audio frequencies transmitted to deliver richer, more natural sounding conversation to calls between Ooma customers. Compatible corded telephone or Ooma Telo Handset is required to support Ooma HD Voice.

People, there IS no such thing as "HD Voice"!! The widely adopted definition of "HD" corresponds to a handful of different high quality video formats. This isn't the first time I've seen brands try to leverage the "HD" name on their products to indicate a better quality device. I can think of a handful of HTC devices with HD in the name, even though they aren't actually HD - just a little better than the previous version. And let's not forget HD Radio. It's a brand, people, not a technology.

Apple probably did the best job of trying to introduce a technical term to consumers by calling their faster iPhone the 3G. Although, most consumers have no idea what 3G means. If I recall correctly, nobody else really referred to 3G phones as 3G phones until Apple started marketing their device as such. Now you see Sprint proudly announcing their next-generation network as the country's first 4G network, most certainly a term they wouldn't have used if it weren't for Apple making 3G a household term. But thanks to consumers understanding the basic concept that "one higher than 3G is 4G, so a higher number must be better," this use of 4G is probably quite relatable to consumers.

Maybe I'll start branding myself as an "HD User Interface Designer" because I sometimes use a wide spectrum of colors that makes designs look nicer and makes people more apt to click on things. But maybe that would just be called being a "good designer". Referring to myself as an HD User Interface Designer makes just as much sense as Ooma calling their voice quality HD, when they should really just be say that their voice quality is now improved.

For the record, I own an Ooma Telo and love it.