On Hold Messaging

Cell phones rarely provide on hold messaging as clear to the listener as do landline phones.  It all has to do with the fact that signals heading to a cell phone are compressed at some point in their traverse of the ether and then decompressed when they get to the cell phone.  The compression and decompression affects the clarity of the signal, more often than not distorting it just enough that the person listening on his cell phone wonders why the on hold messaging is scratchy, laced with static, or just plain difficult to hear.  It is very likely not the fault of the On Hold Messaging announcer, the unit that plays the on hold messages, but the fault of the technology that allows us to communicate by cell phone.