Wide Band Audio

September 6, 2013 By The mVoice Team No Comment

VOIP technology continues to evolve and improve all the time and with the introduction of wide band audio, VOIP has managed to a further steps forwards in providing business with crisp and clear communication that far exceeds traditional copper phone lines.

In the past, critics were always quick to aim their barbed bow at what many perceive as VOIP’s Achilles heel: inferior audio quality. But the idea that VOIP still comes with a risk of substandard call quality is both inaccurate and outdated.

New wide band audio technology – often referred to as high definition (HD) sound – has effectively eliminated the issue. Two years ago Telstra launched ‘the largest HD network in the world’ – positioning their infrastructure to allow wide band audio availability to anyone in possession of a compatible device or handset.

To experience wide band audio you will need an end to end connection supported by wide band audio – in other words a call between two compatible mobile handsets connected on Telstra’s 4G network (for example), however a call to a traditional PSTN line will not support wide band, nor will a call from Telstra’s network to another network (whether both are 4G or not).

So before we get carried away with the potential for wide band audio we need to remember that to experience this improvement on a widespread basis we will need co-operation between carriers to respect requests to pass calls through networks as wide band audio.

So how does it work?

To understand audio, you first need to understand codecs. An audio codec is the computer program responsible for coding and decoding (or compressing and decompressing) digital audio signals.

High definition sound typically operates using a codec called G.722, although there are others.

The important thing is the dramatic improvement in audio quality: wide band allows you to hear voices as if you were standing next to them. It also radically reduces the transmission of background noise, by better detecting sounds in close proximity, so you don’t have to struggle to make out a conversation over the noise of rush hour traffic, screaming children or a howling gale.

Don’t believe us? Take a look at this video from Telstra demonstrating the difference.

The jump in sound quality is comparative to that experienced when music moved from cassettes to CDs and MP3 files. Some say wide band does to sound what high definition does to television or what pixels do to photography. Basically, it profoundly enhances your experience.

While there is still work to be done to enable wide band audio across all telephone calls, governments around the world are now either considering or have commenced replacing traditional copper based telephone networks with optical fiber packet-switched VoIP networks such as Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN).

So it’s safe to say we are going to continue to see big improvements in audio quality: the new iPhone 5 integrates wide band and Skype recently launched its own version of high definition sound.

Fortunately for you, if not us, we work in an industry that doesn’t sleep as thanks to this we are constantly innovating to bring the very best quality to our customers. That means mVoice will always offer you the latest and greatest in technology .

If you want to find out more about this topic, take a look at this paper from Australian company Polaris or feel free to contact us to see how you can get the best audio quality.