HD Voice Providers Unite!

By Paula Bernier

The path that HD voice is taking is a familiar one in communications: Get the technology working in the network. Get devices in users’ hands. Then forge alliances to bring islands of the technology together to allow for more widespread use.

XConnect (News - Alert), a software company that sells wholesale IP interconnect and registry services, is first to the plate with an HD voice peering federation, which it’s inviting HD audio-capable service providers using the G.722 codec to trial on a complementary basis starting this month.

“The mass-market adoption of high-definition voice and other new IP services demands trusted, scalable cross-network interconnection,” says XConnect CEO Eli Katz (News - Alert). “Service providers are eager for a solution. We look forward to working with the industry to help bring the benefits of HD voice to these operators, and the consumer and enterprise markets they serve.”

Until now, the lack of federation was the biggest hurdle of the widespread deployment and adoption of HD voice, says Jeff Rodman, co-founder and CTO at Polycom (News - Alert), which has publicly voiced its support for the XConnect effort. Right now, says Rodman, XConnect appears to be the only player in terms of providing HD voice federation. But over time, he adds, chances are good that others might get on the field.

Those involved in the XConnect trial will become members of a private peering community under the Private Alliance feature of the company’s Global Alliance, which combines ENUM registry and multimedia interconnection hub services. The trial stage is expected to run through June. Following that, the company will offer HD voice federation to its carrier customers with a yet-to-be-announced minimum spend on other XConnect services.

John Wilkinson, vice president of sales, marketing and products at XConnect, explains that the federation requires the installation of a local directory server database at each participating service provider’s location, next to its session border controller. The data will include all the numbers of HD-capable endpoints on the networks of other carriers in the federation.

Only those calls in which both ends are HD capable will receive the higher level of service, says Wilkinson. But he notes that expectations are high for HD audio, which many supporters of the technology believe will become viral as users are exposed to its many benefits and encourage others to join the HD voice movement. As reported previously by INTERNET TELEPHONY, one prognostication is that by the end 2010 people will be asking for HD voice and that by 2013 everyone will have it.

Junction Networks is a New York City-based company that sells hosted PBX (News - Alert) and PSTN gateway services. According to CEO Michael Oeth, the company’s services have been HD voice-based from the start. More recently, however, Junction introduced an HD-based conferencing server.

Oeth says he’d like to see more integration so his customers’ HD endpoints can talk to other carriers’ HD-capable customer endpoints.

That wish is moving closer to reality as more carriers roll out HD audio.

Such major providers as China Unicom (News - Alert), Korea Telecom and Orange also have introduced this technology. There’s even a new HD voice iPhone application, which was approved by Apple in February, according to one of INTERNET TELEPHONY’s sources.

France Telecom (News - Alert)’s Orange at Mobile World Congress in February announced plans to launch mobile HD voice service in France, Luxembourg and Spain in 2010. This follows introductions of HD audio in Belgium and Moldova. The company also plans U.K. trials early this year and a nationwide rollout there later this year.

“Orange is proud to be leading the industry into the next decade by announcing a new standard in voice innovation that will transform the mobile experience for customers in the U.K.,” says Orange UK CEO Tom Alexander. “HD voice really does inject a level of innovation into mobile phone calls, making it sound as if callers are actually in the same room. Once people have tried it, they won’t want to go back.”

Of course, unlike most of the wireline service providers getting into HD audio, which use the royalty-free G.722 codec, Orange and the other wireless providers embracing this technology are using the WB-AMR codec, which is better suited to wireless networks.

Rodman says that in the future companies such as Polycom might put that codec into their wireline phones. But another way to enable HD-capable wireline phones discover and communicate with HD-capable wireless phones, and vice versa, would be to do network-based transcoding involving a gateway.

However, G.722 and WB-AMR are just two of several HD voice codecs, notes Jan Linden, vice president of engineering at Global IP Solutions (News - Alert), or GIPS, an early entrant to the HD audio space. Other HD voice codecs include G722.1; G722.2; iSAC, a GIPS codec in use on nearly 1 billion endpoints today; and SILK, which is used by Skype (News - Alert), says Linden.

An XConnect spokeswoman tells INTERNET TELEPHONY that although the company’s federation trial will initially be limited to the G.722 codec, the company is open to supporting additional HD voice codecs over time if its operator partners express an interest in that.

Linden adds that making sure end users have an optimized HD voice experience is about more than just introducing or translating among codecs. It also requires the use of microphones and speakers that support 8KHz or higher bandwidth, and it entails the already-in-use network practices of controlling jitter and doing echo cancellation, he says. IT

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