TMCnews Featured Article

August 18, 2011

HD Voice Improves Understanding When Accents are Heavy

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

We rely heavily on communications to help promote our business efforts, and we can’t afford to have anything less than stellar quality delivered by vendors. VoIP vendors often argue that the clarity of high-definition (HD) VoIP will enable users in the global economy to more readily communicate with colleagues ad partners located throughout the world. Perhaps what we really need is not HD VoIP, but HD voice.

According to this Search Unified Communications (News - Alert) piece from TechTarget, Siemens Enterprise (News - Alert) Communications is positioning and rebranding its support of the G.722. This standardized HD VoIP codec can transmit 7 KHz. The driver behind this innovation is the need for clearer, higher-quality audio in a workforce that is increasingly globalized.

One of the reasons we need HD voice is the frequency in which business users communicate with those in another language, or in the same language with a heavy accent. In the best of conditions, it can be difficult to understand everything that is said. If the quality of the call is not guaranteed with HD voice, the entire interaction can be challenging.

To help meet the need in the HD voice space, Siemens announced a low-end, HD-VoIP-capable SIP phone, the OpenStage 5. The company also rebranded its existing support for G.722 across all of its IP phones under the trademark AudioPresence HD. Known also as wideband audio, HD VoIP is considered to be the umbrella term for a collection of proprietary and standardized voice codecs that rely on less compression than legacy narrowband codecs. The result is HD voice and more resilient VoIP traffic.

Even with the advancements in HD voice and other VoIP technologies, there are still some who don’t readily believe it will make those with accents easier to understand. Mike Shisko, director of IT at Hitachi (News - Alert) Consulting Corp. shared his insight and first-hand experiences.

According to Shisko, his company has experienced the challenge of understanding non-native speakers from all sides and in several languages. He shares from personal experience that the challenge with understanding other language speakers is no worse – and no better – when in person than it is by phone.

Of course, the purpose of HD voice when used with VoIP is not to improve upon the face-to-face communications quality, but to make it as close to this level as possible. HD voice won’t eliminate accents or clarify anyone’s dialect. Instead, it eliminates any interference in the quality of the call that can impede effective communications.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi

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HD Voice Improves Understanding When Accents are Heavy

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