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HD Conferencing Feature: HD Voice to Grow with Bandwidth Requirements

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HD Conference Featured Article


January 08, 2010

HD Conferencing Feature: HD Voice to Grow with Bandwidth Requirements

By Amy Tierney, TMCnet Web Editor


There’s a growing movement when it comes to the adoption of high-definition voice or HD Voice. It’s no surprise. Businesses and consumers alike, are constantly on the hunt for new technology that helps them better communicate, such as HD conferencing tools, or better quality with HD TV.

 
And one executive from a provider of messaging, collaboration and mobile media, said the movement of HD Voice won’t happen overnight, but will grow steadily in popularity.
 
“HD Voice, in a mobile context, will not enter the market in a single seminal event but will continue to appear incrementally as expendable bandwidth permits,” Earl W. Philmon, vice president, business management, Movius Interactive Corporation, told TMCnet CEO Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) in an interview, printed in full below. “Technology migrations to millions of subscribers are less like cutting a crop and more like growing a crop. I would expect multiple codec options will be required for sometime as new network deployment materialize.”
 
Philmon, who will be speaking at ITEXPO (News - Alert) East 2010 at a session called “Integrating and Automating Presence in Mobile Applications,” also said that the most innovative technology to hit the marketplace will let people more effectively browse the Internet on their mobile devices. Wider adoption of smartphones will only fuel the introduction of new mobile-specific solutions. And with it. Philmon said he sees “major breakthroughs on the horizon” regarding the user experience and expanded access.
 
The full exchange follows.
 
Rich Tehrani: Smartphones continue to rise, find their ways into offices and homes alike. Who will dominate that market and why?
 
Earl Philmon: Applications will continue to drive the success of the smartphone segment. Since only a few applications account for the majority of thedownloads it shouldn’t be hard for new competitors to quickly attack the iPhone market. Everyone else is playing catch up in terms of market awareness and acceptance. I agree with the analysts that iPhone will continue to lead at least for the next year or two, and Android (News - Alert) based phones will grow quickly.
 
RT: We hear more and more about high-definition voice features in IP communications products and services. What is going to drive wideband audio and HD VoIP into the mainstream market? How long will it take?
 
EP: In my opinion HD Voice, in a mobile context, will not enter the market in a single seminal event but will continue to appear incrementally as expendable bandwidth permits. Technology migrations to millions of subscribers are less like cutting a crop and more like growing a crop. I would expect multiple codec options will be required for sometime (maybe 10 or more years) as new network deployment materialize.
 
RT: What’s the most innovative product that’s going to hit the market in 2010, from a company other than your own?
 
EP: I’m not sure it will happen in 2010, but the technology is already available to allow for more effective and expanded access to almost everything currently available from your computer.
 
RT: We entered 2009 in a recession and now we’re seeing signs of the economy picking up. How did the slow economy affect demand for your products and services and what are you anticipating in 2010?
 
EP: 2009 was a challenging year and customers were managing their budgets more tightly than I’ve seen at any point in my career. However, at Movius (News - Alert) we focused on driving value in two areas: customer retention and increased revenues. While customers were looking for quick return on their investment and limiting their spending our company was doubling down our investment on new innovative applications so that we could bring new value added services to market more quickly than in the past. The net result was that our customers could deploy with little risk and creating opportunities for significant return on their investment. While some segments of the market were declining the value added services segment of our revenues grew rapidly. For 2010 I would expect customer behavior to mirror what we saw in 2009. 
 
RT: President Barack Obama has been in office for nearly a year. What has surprised you, whether a pleasant surprise or disappointment, about his presidency, policies and administration?
 
EP: I’m disappointed that more has not been done to address financial oversight. Faith in our investment system is critical to the future growth of the US and global economy. While I believe the markets are predicting a strong recovery I don’t see the balanced investment environment that will lead to a broad economic recovery. Banking and investment companies rely on trust from their investors and customers. Once we obtain a fair market free of risk of unabated fraud can we expect a strong sustainable surge and will likely see significant growth in new businesses.
 
RT: If you were president of the United States, what tech-friendly policies would you enact?
 
EP: I would focus in two areas: Education and small business incentives. As everyone knows the United States is lagging most developed economies in producing new engineers and scientist. If we want to be competitive we should start by creating new engineers when they enter Elementary school. Most people talk about encourage high school students to consider these career paths. But I would suggest that there aren’t enough students fully prepared to face the challenge and therefore they wouldn’t succeed even if we could get them excited about technology. We need to start much earlier. Advanced math skills can only be attained when the student has a solid mathematical foundation. 
 
Secondly, I would create small business incentives for technology based companies. These incentives don’t necessarily need to be government funded but could be created with capital gains tax incentives which would encourage greater investment in high tech incubation. Since most new companies fail we need a lot of new start-ups and that takes a lot of capital. The US needs to continue up the value chain and that requires new ideas and the opportunity to gain significant reward from taking the risks to pursue a new venture.
 
RT: What are some of the areas of market growth in the next few years?
 
EP: We at Movius are focused on growth from Messaging and Communication Applications. We expect carriers, PTTs and MSOs to aggressively pursue value added capabilities for their customers. We’re focusing on a broad market segmentation by delivery high end value added services only viable on a smart phone on one end of spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum we’re developing solutions that make it possible for customers in aspiring countries to have a phone number and to communicate even if they don’t have a phone. This multi-segment approach is possible since we develop products for one market segment and leverage that same technology to address completely unrelated market segments. 
I’m also certain we’ll see breakthrough developments in end user devices that make them more adaptive to the user’s environment. Mobile technology should be aware of where you are (geographically, socially, etc.) and how best to meet your needs based on your preferences for that location.
 
RT: I understand you are speaking during ITEXPO East 2010 in Miami, to be held Jan. 20 to 22. Talk to us about your session or sessions. Who should attend and why?
 
EP: As we’ve discussed Movius is focused on developing new applications and we’re excited about the latest enhancement we’ve introduced that improve end user presence solutions. One of the biggest problems with previous presence solutions is that they are only useful if the users remembers to maintain the proper status and continually makes periodic updates. Movius solved this problem by automating the presence status update process. When I walk into my office my presence status is automatically updated and when I leave my office my presence status is automatically updated. This ensures critical applications that depend on presence status will work properly and there is no interaction required on my part to manage the services. I would encourage anyone interested in value added services to attend the session title “Integrating and Automating Presence in Mobile Applications”.
 
RT: Please give me one outrageous prediction pertaining to our markets for 2010.
 
EP: We’ve all been talking about killer apps and trying to determine which one will change everything. Maybe Google will commission NASA to completely map the surface of Mars and Garmin (News - Alert) will add these maps to their GPS products. I don’t know what outrageous ideas are forthcoming from other companies but I know we at Movius haven’t had a problem “thinking outside of the box” since we issue box cutters to all employees.
 
To find out more about Earl Philmon and Movius Interactive Corporation, visit the company at ITEXPO East 2010. To be held Jan. 20 to 22 in Miami, ITEXPO is the world’s premier IP communications event. Philmon is speaking during “Integrating and Automating Presence in Mobile Applications.” Don’t wait. Register now.
 

Amy Tierney is a Web editor for TMCnet, covering business communications Her areas of focus include conferencing, SIP, Fax over IP, unified communications and telepresence. Amy also writes about education and healthcare technology, overseeing production of e-Newsletters on those topics as well as communications solutions and UC. To read more of Amy's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Amy Tierney


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