HD Telephony: The Next Big Step?
How much will you pay to sound great on the phone? That's the question Jeff Pulver and crew will need to answer when vendors and customers meet at the upcoming HD VoIP Summit in New York later this month.
Sit in on any conversation over between phones with HD CODECs and it's pretty hard to argue that the voice quality does not enhance the conversation. The richness and depth of sound makes anyone sound like James Earl Jones, well almost. Being able to hear someone so clearly makes it easier to concentrate on what they're saying NOT how they're saying it. The challenge will be translating that into value organizations will buy.
No question there's lots of interest in the area. The Zisapel brothers (Yehuda and Zohar), the brains behind the RAD group of companies, are helping fund yet another startup, RADLive. Not much is known about RADLive, but they are developing a high definition VoIP solution. Given Zisapel's preference for the public network market and the connection the company employees have with BigBandNetworks, a provider of network-based platforms to cable operators and telephone companies, RADLive will likely target carriers, but in what capacity remains to be seen.
They won't be alone. The HD VoIP market today is well populated with service provider and enterprise solutions. Global IP Solutions (GIPS) still makes CODECS. forsoftphones, mobile phones, ATAs and IP Phones. HD phones can also be purchased through SNOM with MeetingPoint, Siemens Gigaset, Polycom and Audiocodes have been making big pushes into the HD arena with handsets and Audiocodes with infrastructure.
What might be missing will be to see the impact open source has on HD arena. The FreeSwitch project is building an open source softswitch, which will be optimized for high definition voice.
Most if not all of those players will be there in New York trying to figure out how to get the industry hooked into the HD sound. Jeff who's no stranger to music or voice could be the perfect lead man for the gig. He's been able to help to play those notes with VoIP in the past. Here's to hoping he can do it again.