OK, so this isn’t exactly news. I’ve been using OnSIP with Polycom IP650 & 550 and a few months already. I hadn’t expected them to support wideband at all but was pleasantly surprised to find that their new conference bridge handles it just fine.
Further, if you’re using suitably capable Polycom or snom phones then calls placed through OnSIP will negotiate to G.722 and voila, much clearer calling. They had a blog post about it a short while ago.
For about the past week I’ve been making a lot of use of the Polycom C100 in conjunction with a copy of Eyebeam provided by ZipDX. The C100 is a great little USB speakerphone device. It was one of the first devices from Polycom the supported wideband audio, providing that you have a similarly capable soft phone client.
I must admit that mine is the C100S model which is designed to work with the Skype client, although there are models that are not client specific. As a practical matter the only functions that are client specific involve the use of the five buttons on the device. The buttons support volume up, volume down, place a call, bring the soft phone client to the foreground and mic mute.
A couple of weeks ago I penned a post about my search for a wideband capable soft phone. A short while later I was contacted by David Frankel of ZipDX. His company offers a standards compatible wideband conference service. It seems that he’s been down the path of wideband telephony a fair distance.
For the past few weeks I’ve been hunting for a soft phone with specific wideband voice capabilities. I’ve found a couple but there arises complications.
Wideband-capable hard phones usually support G.722, G.722.1 or G.722.2 (aka AMR-WB) codecs. There are other codecs out there that support wideband voice coding. Speex is the one most often cited. However, Speex support in hardware is extremely limited. So Speex implemented in a soft phone is not going to help me evaluate interoperability with hard phones.
Over the coming weeks and months I hope to explore wideband voice in greater depth. My recent purchase of a couple of Polycom IP650s and the Siemens S685IP provide me with some hardware end-points. I may also buy a snom phone as well, with the optional Klarvoice handset.
However, some of what I wish to undertake would be well served by a soft phone. As yet I have been unable to find a software that supports the G.722 wideband codec.
Having invested some time in cleaning up my office earlier this week I was forced to commit some effort to the research behind a new review that I’ve been tasked with writing. In so doing I was experimenting with call setup between various different devices, including a Polycom IP550 and a Siemens S685IP.