AT&T kicks off HD Voice rollout on May 23

AT&T is throwing its hat in the ring for HD Voice.

Starting May 23, AT&T will begin rolling out HD Voice across select areas in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, the company announced on Thursday. AT&T plans to continue the rollout in other areas "on a market-by-market basis."

HD Voice has become the next frontier for mobile carriers. The technology captures and interprets human voice over seven octaves, compared to four octaves with current cellular phone service. The technology also eliminates background noise. The effect is a better overall voice experience, the wireless carriers claim.

AT&T announced plans to launch HD Voice earlier this year. The company was a little late in its announcement, considering Sprint first spoke about the technology two years ago, and T-Mobile has been touting HD Voice for well over a year.

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AT&T's first foray into HD Voice will run on the company's LTE network. For now, the service will be enabled on the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini, but more devices will support it in the coming months.

CNET has contacted AT&T for additional comment on the announcement. We will update this story when we have more information.