Thilo Salmon, CEO of SIPGate, was our guest on the VUC call on June 4th. Until then I had only passing awareness of the company, primarily as a result of speaking with some associates in the UK and Germany who have used the service for years. I signed up for an account just to give it a whirl. Further, I was more than a little intrigued when Mr Salmon said that the service has some support for wideband calling using G.722.
Perhaps the easiest way to get a sense of wideband quality is to try Skype. The software’s setup is extremely easy and it supports all the common computer platforms. Calls between Skype accounts are wideband when the available network bandwidth supports its use. That would be almost always for most people.
Not long ago telecom writer and blogger Doug Mohney issued forth a Tweet asking:
“Anyone out there using HD calling (G.722) on a daily basis?”
I’ve not met Doug, although I sat a few seats down from him much of the day at last month’s HD Communications Summit. I’ve read his work at various places including FierceVoIP. Doug truly knows telecom.
What his tweet brought to mind is the simple fact that many people might be interested in making use of wideband voice, but not know where to start. I use wideband voice, in one form or another, literally every day. If you’re a technical sort it’s not that difficult. For the non-technical it can be a minefield. So I thought I should offer some suggestions based upon my own SOHO experience.