In the past 10 years, Voice over IP has emerged as an alternative to the traditional Telephony (PSTN) allowing a reduction in costs and increased capacity on long-distance telephone calls. While providing for lower costs and greater flexibility on converged voice and data networks, VoIP in general failed to deliver ‘better-than-PSTN’ quality, mainly due to the 3.4 Khz bandwidth limitation of legacy narrowband speech codecs. Capitalizing on expanding IP broadband networks, wideband speech codecs which encode 7.1 Khz of the voice spectrum can now be effectively deployed in VoIP. This enables the doubling of bandwidth for voice communications, allowing the elevation of daily voice communication to be similar to that of FM radio and/or conference room quality.
HD VoIP provides substantial benefits for both Service Providers and Businesses. HD VoIP for Service Providers, enables the differentiation of a VoIP service offering by giving customers a natural voice experience, permitting them to have increased call durations and extended network usage, all leading to higher Average Revenue per User (ARPU) and lower customer churn. Businesses benefit from HD VoIP as it significantly improves voice intelligibility and clarity; enhancing worker collaboration, bridging geographical gaps with remote branches and improving business productivity (i.e. saves on travel costs). Service-oriented businesses can enjoy higher customer satisfaction and increased productivity.
In order to benefit from the sound quality that HD VoIP technology allows, the endpoints must support the technology itself. Currently, regular phones are limited by the handset, microphone and speaker technologies, which are unable to transmit the broad range of frequencies in human speech. Wideband IP Phones, HD-enabled DECT phones and wideband AMR-enabled mobile phones solve this problem by supporting wideband coders, high quality speakers and microphones.
High Definition VoIP technology enhances applications deployed in many industries, and can save lives in critical environments. Industries such as banks and trading rooms (receiving orders via telephone), travel agents (handling travel arrangements and reservations), military and Home Land Security (issuing military orders), Air Traffic Control (in which voice is a vital component) - all need intelligibility improvements that can be achieved with this technology.
HD Audio Conferencing can improve productivity and reduce costs (in business environments), and enable medical professionals to give a more accurate treatment (in the case of Telemedicine). HD Audio Conferencing enables the idea that speakers are present in a room as if they were actually there.
People originating from different geographic locations who communicate by using different native languages and accents can significantly improve the clarity of their call by using Wideband coders. In the mobile environment, where there is interference of background noise, HD VoIP can help enhance the user experience by improving the voice quality and differentiate between various carriers. Internet applications like gaming, chat or streaming can benefit from the new HD VoIP experience. Lastly, globalization is occurring rapidly with additional call centers located in non-native geographies, having to effectively communicate and work with different users in order to resolve problems.
Wideband vocoders operate at a frequency range of 50-7000. Uncompressed wideband speech provides a significant quality edge over narrowband speech - more than a full MOS point. When comparing a modern wideband coder, such as G.729.1 at 24 or 32 kbps to a traditional narrowband VoIP coder such as G.729A at 8 kbps, the improvement is even greater and can be extended to almost 1.5 MOS at a relatively minor increase in bit-rate, when employed over broadband IP networks.
Wideband coders vs Narrowband coders bit-rate cooperation:
AudioCodes’ HD VoIP delivers innovative, reliable technology providing customers and partners with a comprehensive selection of cost-effective and flexible network devices, end-user appliances and voice processing technologies.
AudioCodes’ current and planned HD Enabled products consist of the IPmedia 3000 Media Server, Mediant 3000 Media Gateway, Mediant 1000 MSBG, the Mediant family of Microsoft certified basic Hybrid Gateways, MediaPack 20x Residential and SOHO Gateways, HD IP Phones and DSPs. In addition, AudioCodes’ Media Servers and Gateways now enable true HD transcoding between different wideband coders (i.e. G.722, AMR-WB and Microsoft RTA) while retaining a wideband quality. This will allow interworking and connectivity between different wideband networks such as the mobile and broadband networks.
Why do we have to sound like air traffic controllers when spelling out confirmation codes? “Papa, Alpha, Delta”. This is due to the limitations that the PSTN enforces on traditional analog and digital telephones and the “3.4 kHz sound barrier”. The adoption of VoIP and broadband networks have given us the opportunity to break through this barrier with a whole new range of wideband and high-quality voice coding algorithms that make communications more efficient, effective and natural. HD VoIP allows carriers to differentiate their services with a much improved audio experience, creating customer loyalty and affinity. Enterprises can differentiate themselves with superior voice quality to their customers, building on their quality branding while improving business efficiency.