Wideband

Topics relating to wideband telephony, aka. HDVoice or HDComms

OnSIP & Android 2.3 (a.k.a Gingerbread)

Earlier this week the Android development team released some news about Android v2.3, aka Gingerbread. This has a lot of people more than a bit excited as one of the new features is a built-in SIP stack.

Some point to this as being a major step toward the integration of Google Voice and Android devices. With a SIP stack included in the OS it will be much easier for people to develop soft phones that leverage the hardware and the data side of Android handsets.

The built-in SIP stack will work with any SIP service provider, giving users tremendous flexibility in choosing who gets their business. It also means that close integration with an IP-PBX will be easier than ever before.

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How To: HDVoice In PBX-In-A-Flash

I recently received an email from someone asking about enabling HDVoice in PBX-In-A-Flash.

I’m about to implement a PBXact for our small company, and I have a nicely running PBX in a Flash in my home. I’m wondering if I can HD-Audio-ize the home rig.

Here’s why I ask. We currently run a SIPX PBX in my company. Everything in that box, all the sound files, are all HD. When you talk to it with an HD endpoint, everything just talks HD. It’s a no brainer.

In my home PIAF/FreePBX/Asterisk, nothing is HD. How do I go about HD-izing it? I have the G.722 codecs all turned on, but I’m wondering if there is an easy way to make all HD-capable endpoints automatically talk HD to each other, and to talk HD to the PBX itself.

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks,

Joe
Fort Collins, Colorado

Since PBX-In-A-Flash is built upon Asterisk there’s a a good chance that this is possible, but its way outside of my scope. Given my employers migration to the OnSIP Hosted PBX I haven’t run Asterisk seriously for some time.

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Reader Voice Comments Officially Launched

You may have noticed the widget that I added to the sidebar about a week ago. Inspired by hearing about Voxeo’s Phono on a recent VUC call I decided that I’d like to provide a mechanism for readers to leave comments in the form of a voice message.

This seemed like it would be really easy, even though I’m not a developer. I was particularly happy to see that there is a WordPress plugin called WordPhone that makes this practical for the complete newby.

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Answering One More Question About HDVoice

Picking up where I left off some time ago, there was one more question arising from the earlier thread in the VoIP Forum at Broadband Reports. PX Eliezer asks:

4) G.722 is royalty-free. That being the case, and if it is not a bandwidth hog, and if it sounds great, then why do so many Voip providers, and so many manufacturers, not support it? In other words, why has adoption been so slow?

There are many factors that have contrived to slow the progress in implementing HDVoice on a broad scale. So many in fact that just pondering them has delayed my response to your question. I didn’t want to drift around a range to topics and make the matter appear utterly insurmountable.

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Making Use of Wideband Voice Right Now!: Blink & SIP2SIP.INFO

Not yet making use of wideband voice? That’s outrageous! It’s so easy, and I’ve given you so many ways to give it a try. Here’s yet another way to try wideband voice…and it’s absolutely free.

Blink is a relative newcomer to the realm of soft phones. Offered by AG Projects Blink was initially released in December 2009 for the Mac platform. Since it’s based upon the Qt framework they were eventually able to offer Linux and Windows releases as well.

VUC founder & host Zeeek has on several occasions expounded on how well Blink behaves on his Mac. Further, Blink supports wideband audio via the G.722 and SPEEX codecs.

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Skype & The New Skype 5.0 For Windows

After many months in beta Skype For Windows 5.0 went “Gold” a couple of weeks ago. The release was made available to all for down load. As I was running the beta I dutifully downloaded the final release to my various Windows systems.

While I was running the beta release I can’t say that I was an active participant in the beta program. I wanted to try the multi-way video calling, which was said to be the major new feature in the release. It works about as you’d expect. You can make video calls to up to ten people, but the video will be at best VGA resolution.

I’ve made a few test calls using this new video calling capability, but it has not worked its way into my routine. Interestingly, there seems to be little interest in video calling using soft clients within the ranks of my employer. People have the webcams but can’t be bothered to use them. In fact, we mostly use Skype for IM and ad hoc file exchange. Even escalating from Skype IM to voice chat is pretty rare.

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