VOIP etc > Voice Over IP - VOIP > VOIP Tech Chat > HD Voip?

HD Voip?

At The HD Communications Summit we will be exploring the issues associated with the widespread deployment of HD VoIP,

Maybe some day. But for now, with most calls to/from the PSTN with its G711 codec, "high definition" audio is very limited. Good to experiment with, and maybe if more people use VoIP directly via a secure ENUM it will catch on, but definitely not mainstream for a while.

reply to Onebucket
I'm wondering too what's the big deal.

Telephone users have got used to what telephones sound like for over 100 years, and don't complain much. Cellphones have even lowered that quality a bit more, and people have got used to it.

As far as higher-definition voice, there have been was of achieving that, through other IP services (Skype was mentioned), or use of various telephone and video conferencing methods (internet or other means).

I see no rush of users demanding all their telephone calls sound like Susan Boyle singing in an orchestra pit.

I tend to agree with you. Most use phones to communicate, briefly with another person. Not to be entertained.

The only HD VOIP device I'm aware of would be the Ooma Telo, which will supposedly have HD between Telo users who use the Telo handsets. This may be good news for some in the same family.

For the most part, phone voice quality is sufficient for the use it has today.
--
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."

reply to Onebucket
This gets discussed quite regularly on the VOIP Users Conference and the discussion always centers around a couple of problems:

1. Broadband connections are not as common as you might think. Wideband calls (HDVoice, G.722, or whatever marketing term you want to use) require more bandwidth and higher quality connections than standard PSTN quality (G.711) calls.

2. Most VOIP users are using ATAs and cordless phones for making calls. ATAs by definition convert analog signals to a digital connection. So PSTN quality is the best you will get with an ATA. The same is true for the cordless phones which typically have lower quality transducers and speakers negating the higher quality of wideband calls.

3. Because calls placed over the PSTN get converted to G.711 (narrowband) you would need to bypass the PSTN and maintain a 100% IP based call (either SIP, SCCP, Skype, or other protocol) to keep it wideband. SIP URI calling allows this but most phones lack a keyboard so dialing the SIP URI is a PITA.

4. Most people are currently happy with cellphone quality and probably don't care enough to make adoption financially feasible.

So until we solve these issues, HD Voice/wideband calling is only going to be limited to the techies of the world (or corporations that have expensive phone systems that can handle the hand-off transparently).

Yes but you are assuming that most people can even use G.711. There are many people in the United States with less than 1Mbps connections or poor quality (high latency) connections that are going to be limited to G.729a.

For example my mother's AT&T DSL will not handle G.711 and must use G.729a due to high packet loss.

Remember that bandwidth issues are not necessarily about the speed of your connection but how few packets are dropped. That's why T1s are still popular in businesses as they are relatively low latency and high quality.

reply to dcdeadbeat5
I am assuming that this would be limited to voip-voip connections for a long time, but if enough people get on the voip bandwagon, and enough of them want sound that is better than pstn, it might spur handset manufacturers to come up with better-sounding ones than exist now, as well as convince other manufacturers of the voip 'infrastructure' to come up with equipment that would pass along the good sound.

Maybe people, even voip users, are so used to pstn-type sound that they aren't interested in this, but speaking just for myself, I can tell you that talking to relatives over skype, with a headset, is a whole new ballgame compared to calling them via pstn or voip-landline. It really makes the phone call more valuable to me.

I agree. On the VOIP Users Conference call, many of the regulars connect by way of a HD/wideband bridge because we all can't stand the narrowband PSTN bridge of the conference call.

In case anyone is interested in joining our weekly discussion about VOIP (it's a bit heavy on Asterisk but all VOIP users are welcome), info can be found at »www.voipusersconference.org/about/ . It's free of course.

reply to Onebucket
Most people seem to get on VOIP without realizing it. Uverse, Comcast digital voice, Vonage, even Ooma are all venues to get VOIP, but my guess is many who use these services don't understand what VOIP is or that they are using it.

The question is will AT&T, Comcast or Vonage see it as in their interest to offer higher quality voice service. If they do, then we may see some interest. I doubt mom and pop VOIP providers can successfully push higher quality voice for the masses.
--
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."

reply to Onebucket
It's another "critical mass" issue. If enough VOIP providers supported it, and enough users had good enough hardware (handsets, ATAs w. WB codecs, SIP phones w. WB codecs) that could use it and if enough calls could be placed without touching the PSTN, then it would likely catch on. But those are three pretty big if's.

reply to Onebucket
»www.celt-codec.org/

»speex.org/

New Features
The development team has packed many new features into FreeSWITCH. Among the most exciting are those that push the envelope of what is possible with VoIP. By teaming with Polycom, the FreeSWITCH team
has made it extremely simple for users to have access to Polycom's wideband (WB) and ultra-wideband (UWB) Siren(tm) family of codecs. Another exciting development is the addition of the 100% open-source CELT codec. CELT supports sampling rates as high as 48kHz, which is actually higher than the 44.1kHz rate used by traditional CDs. (As a proof-of-concept, Anthony and Brian ran FreeSWITCH on their Macs and Anthony played a guitar solo over a 48kHz session. Brian summed it up in one word: AWESOME.) These codecs are zero-cost alternatives to other patent-encumbered technologies, like G.729. As networking infrastructure improves, both in private networks and the public Internet, the use of WB, UWB, and HD telephony will become increasingly common.

»www.freeswitch.org/node/157

reply to garys_2k

reply to DogFace05

reply to Onebucket
"Telephones have remained unchanged for so long, most people have no idea what limitations they have lived with. This has begun to change with the recent rise of wideband technologies for the masses such as Skype. Now people are asking everywhere, "why does Skype sound so darn good?" The answer is that Skype is capturing double the spectrum of voice frequencies that are captured by standard telephones.

Standard PSTN, and the overwhelming majority of VoIP telecom codecs, capture at 8 kHz. Skype can capture at 16 kHz. The added fidelity in the high frequencies adds substantially to the realism of the reproduction, makes it possible to distinguish between otherwise difficult syllables of "s" "f" "c" "e" "d" and so on, and in an unmeasurable way, creates much more a sense of "being there" with the other person. The comparison is analagous to that of AM and FM broadcast fidelity."

»www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Wideband+VoIP

We currently use several remote extensions, 1 in Canada. Using G.711u, the quality is better than PSTN.

reply to druber

fair enough. was there a reason you couldn't have said this to begin with?

reply to cbrain

reply to DogFace05
Open your mind. We are no longer tied to a POTS world.

»www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php···IPPhones

»www.google.com/search?client=fir···e+Search