A highly unusual donation was made to the Mobile Phone Museum with the arrival of the Nortel SoundBeam. This novel wireless telephony device was developed in 1995 by Bell-Northern Research (BNR), Nortel’s R&D subsidiary in Ottawa, Canada. It was not a mobile phone per se, but a ‘wearable audio apparatus’, which was a new category of product described by BNR designers as a ‘neckset’. It comprised remarkable directional loudspeakers, designed to deliver a high-quality, personal, and private audio experience to the user. The initial configuration employed a 900 MHz radio transceiver to connect with a base unit that interfaced to a conventional fixed landline. These days, such a device would have undoubtedly used Bluetooth.
The key principle behind the SoundBeam was to provide the convenience of a hands-free speakerphone with the privacy of a headset. This was accomplished with advanced loudspeaker technology that sent sound waves upward (towards the user’s ears) but not outward towards other people in the vicinity. It provided an uncanny ‘private bubble’ of audio for the user, whose phone call could not be overheard by those nearby. In addition, SoundBeam had a directional microphone. Since it was just a few inches below the user’s mouth, the transmitted audio was not contaminated by the usual ‘barrel effect’ (reverberation) and background noise common in speakerphones. The end result was a telephony experience whose quality was comparable to a conventional telephone handset, but with the convenience of mobility and hands-free operation.
Figure 1: Mobile Phone Museum Founder, Ben Wood, Wearing the Nortel SoundBeam
The original concept for the neckset dates back to 1983 at BNR’s design labs. Jim Bee, one of the first industrial designers hired by Northern Electric a decade earlier, came up with the idea as part of an initiative to develop next-generation integrated voice and data terminals (see picture below and also full document here).
Figure 2: Original Design Drawing by Jim Bee of the "Neck Set" which became the Nortel SoundBeam
The Museum’s collection also includes one of the few remaining SoundBeam trial units, donated by Lisa Fast via David Cuddy who has provided a treasure trove of Nortel-related information and various key devices from the period. Approximately 500 were manufactured.
The SoundBeam was first demonstrated in the BNR Futures room at Nortel’s booth at Telecom’95, adjacent to the Orbitor demo (for more information see the Orbitor entry on the Mobile Phone Museum website). Subsequently, BNR undertook a comprehensive market trial to validate the design hypothesis, technology, and marketability. A pre-production run was commissioned, and trial units were provided to over 500 users in various settings: enterprise, small business, and residential. Feedback from the users was in general quite positive, although some found the notion of an odd-looking wearable wireless device to be less than appealing. On the other hand, several users in the trial responded with what BNR designers called the “gotta have it!” response. They were so enamoured that they refused to return their SoundBeam units at the conclusion of the trial. The private audio attribute was particularly valued in large open-concept offices, where conventional speakerphones were distracting to all.
At the end of the trial, Nortel product managers elected not to take the SoundBeam forward as a product offering, despite the encouraging trial feedback. Some months later, Nortel decided to exit from the telephone and cellphone business segment entirely. A US patent for the directional loudspeaker invention was later acquired by Microsoft. The SoundBeam remains but a fond memory for those who were fortunate enough to work on it.
