By Doug Mohney, on August 31st, 2010
It’s official: Orange (www.orange.com) has formally launched its mobile HD voice in the UK. And there’s a new phone manufacturer in the mobile HD voice mix as well.
Covered by BBC News and V3.co.uk, there’s not a lot new, with a rehash of the trials that took place over the summer in the UK and how Moldova got HD voice first and that Orange will not be charging extra for HD voice service.
However, three Nokia handsets – X6, E5, N5230 – will be joined by the Samsung OmniPro in initially supporting mobile HD voice in the form of the AMR-WB codec on Orange’s 3G network. Previous announcements have listed Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets, so Samsung is the third on-the-record handset vendor supporting AMR-WB for voice calls.
Former T-Mobile customers may not be happy either; the service will not initially be available on the old T-Mobile network since the Orange and T-Mobile networks haven’t been merged together in the UK.
An Orange spokesperson expects mobile HD voice to be a standard offering on all networks in about two years.
By Doug Mohney, on August 27th, 2010
Evolve, a Cincinnati Bell Company focusing on business solutions, has just announced a new suite of “cloud” products based on an MPLS platform. The Emerge product provides a hosted VoIP solution which will support HD Voice, says the PR rep.
More specifically, Evolve will support HD on both Polycom and Cisco handsets. Of course, the devil is in the details and HD Voice News has asked for more information on how far HD voice support will go; i.e. within the customer premise, to all Evolve customers calling each other, to carriers beyond the Evolve cloud.
By Doug Mohney, on August 27th, 2010
The Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) will be holding its 6th annual VoIP Conference and Expo on October 12-14, 2010. Will it have HD voice content? HD Voice News has submitted a proposal, so we’ll see if we can rate at least a panel discussion.
Happening in the Chicago area, the conference bills itself as the place “where industry and academia meet” and expects over 200 attendees.
Conference keynote highlights include–
- Christopher Mayer, Vice-President, Systems Integration and Testing, Verizon Communications will chair a panel session on " Carriers View of VoIP and the Future"
- Eric Burger, Georgetown University will address “Interoperability – We Can Achieve It – IETF Can Help” in a Keynote discussion.
- Henning Schulzrinne, Professor and Chair in the Dept. of Computer Science; also with the Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University will speak on the smart-grid theme, "Connecting VoIP and Location with the Physical World."
- Richard Shockey, Chairman of the Board of the SIPForum, will chair a panel entitled, "The V in VoIP is Video", examining the implications of recent explosion of products and services that allow us to stream video as part of our daily live.
- Henry Sinnreich and Alan Johnston, Industry consultants and authors will discuss "How will VoIP reincarnate in the Web and Cloud worlds?"
Mayer’s comments should be particularly interesting, since Verizon Business has rolled out its enterprise VIPER solution and will be supporting HD voice by the end of the year.
Schulzrinne, Shockey, and Sinnreich were all long-time VON presenters back in the day.
By Doug Mohney, on August 26th, 2010
Installation of Google voice and videomail chat reveals the line “Google voice and video chat incorporates technologies from Global IP Solutions and Vidyo, Inc. which are covered under pending U.S. and foreign patent applications.”
So, what does this mean, exactly?
Google could have simply said “You’re ready to go” and left it at that, but why is it invoking the whole patent issue?
For minimalist Google, it is an intriguing line that begs the question: Does Google expect third-parties to try to shoehorn in on Google Voice or its codec technologies?
By Doug Mohney, on August 19th, 2010
Ooma (www.ooma.com) says it should have HD voice ready to roll “by the end of September” and getting it to customers is the “top priority now.” And oh-by-the-way, the software on on Ooma’s Telo hardware is FreeSWITCH, not Digium Asterisk.
Dennis Peng, Ooma’s VP of Product Management, said while the company had announced a number of features at CES, it was forced to prioritize implementation on the items it fully controlled.
Peng said that HD voice is the “top priority now” and he believes the company can roll it out “by the end of September.”
Porting FreeSWITCH to Telo’s Mindspeed processor – an ARM derivative – from scratch proved to more challenging than initially anticipated. Implementing HD voice required more work and integration, including making sure that the company’s underlying PureVoice technology worked before putting HD on top of it.
Peng said that HD voice was one component of PureVoice and the most important feature for the company to implement, since customers “churn off” of VoIP services if the voice quality is poor.
Another challenge Peng cited was the ability to get wideband to effectively work over the wireless DECT hardware of the Telo handset.
G.722 will be the primary HD voice codec Ooma supports, but the company is looking at AMR-WB down the road. “It does reduce bandwidth [usage], that’s important for us,” said Peng, since PureVoice adds redundancy in bandwidth-constrained situations. Since G.722 uses 64 Kbps while AMR-WB uses 24 Kbps for an HD call, AMR-WB would fit well into the PureVoice philosophy/implementation.
By Doug Mohney, on August 18th, 2010
The CAT-iq Developers Conference has announced the latest set of speakers for its conference on October 19-20 at the High Tech Campus, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
Erich Kamperschroer, Chairman DECT Forum / Gigaset
Ruth Wilson, CAT-iq working group / Lantiq
Daniel Hartnett, Chairman CAT-iq working / DSP Group
Pierre Yves Plaza Tron, Telefonica I&D / Beywatch
Ingvar Meijers, Managing Director, Sonos Europe BV
Dr. Georgina Voss, Researcher and Project Manager, Tinker London
Steven Leussink Program Manager, SiTel Semiconductor
Dan Klier VP Cordless and VoIP Product Management, DSP Group
Karl-Heinz Mueller, Director New Technology Development, CCT
Peter Mariager, Technology Manager RTX
Joe Lomako, Business Development Manager, TRaC Global
Dr. H. W. Gierlich, Head of Telecom Division, HEAD acoustics GmbH
Arjen Noorbergen, CTO, Home Automation Europe
This event looks to be the best bet for HD voice content in Europe this fall.
By Doug Mohney, on August 16th, 2010
Rich Buchanan, former chief marketing officer of Ooma, passed away on the morning of August 13, 2010. According to the post at GigaOm and via Buchanan’s Twitter account, Buchanan had recently undergone four hours of open heart surgery.
Buchanan was an advocate for HD voice during a two year tenure at Ooma that ended in February of this year. A long time industry vet of the consumer electronics industry, he had previously worked at Sling Media and Creative Labs.
Rich’s insight will be sorely missed. HD Voice News extends its condolences to the Buchanan family and friends.
By Doug Mohney, on August 11th, 2010
Thanks to Quentin Pagès for the tip
On its website, Orange says that by the end of the summer, its 3G+ network in France will be “100%” HD voice.
The information is provided on Orange’s mobile coverage web page. It says Orange has 92 percent of France’s population covered with 3G+ – France Telecom-speak for the latest and greatest HSPA-esque data network.
Needless to say, this latest tidbit jives with Orange/France Telecom’s modus operandi – roll out 3G+, test HD voice, declare victory and move on to the next area that needs a network upgrade/greenfield build.
Given the pace of Orange’s rollout, the next move will likely be announcements of more HD voice (i.e. AMR-WB) compatible handsets above and beyond the usual Sony Ericsson and Nokia suspects.
By Doug Mohney, on August 10th, 2010
According to a piece published yesterday in Enterprise VoIP Planet, Ooma (www.ooma.com) plans to launch an HD voice service “within the next few months.”
Hello, hello? This is what the company’s been saying over the past year. And oh-by-the-way, it looks like the company has finished reshuffling its executive suite with a new VP of Marketing.
Enterprise VoIP Planet interviewed VP of Product Marketing Dennis Peng, who made the statement about HD voice coming “within the next few months” after going through the laundry list of everything recently added to the ooma product line other than HD voice – an iPhone app, a Bluetooth app, and an international calling bundle. Which two of these things are like Vonage, and which one isn’t?
The ooma HD voice and subscribers saga
Ooma has been promising/touting HD voice quality for its second-generation Telo hardware since last year, with then-CMO Rich Buchanan making the rounds at HD voice events and citing Telo as having support for both G.722 HD voice and CAT-iq. But ooma supposedly had issues shipping enough Telo for the 2009 holiday season, and was unable to send review hardware to media.
By January 2010, ooma said it had shipped around 100,000 units – the same number that Peng cited in his interview with Enterprise VoIP Planet on August 9, 2010 – with around 25,000 of those being the new Telo hardware in 4Q 2009. HD voice capability was “coming” and slated for April.
In an Ooma company post on February 1, 2010, the CEO cites numbers “approaching 100,000 subscribers” and talks about when calling Ooma to Ooma with Ooma HD Voice, the voice quality is truly remarkable.”
April came and Ooma released “True Voice” but no HD voice. By then, CMO Rich Buchanan was gone, gone, gone and then-VP of Corporate Marketing Tami Bhaumik said that they wanted to get HD voice right and it would appear over the summer. Now Bhaumik is gone, replaced by a straight-up VP of Marketing.
Regardless, either Ooma is stuck at around 100,000 subscribers, it has a slow growth rate, or there’s some strangeness going on in how it counts people.
The ooma executive staffing saga
Ooma’s website now lists Jim Gustke as Vice President of Marketing. Using a little Kremlinology (kids, look it up if it doesn’t ring a bell) on the company’s press releases, it appears Tami Bhaumik departed/was kicked to the curb in July to bring in Gustke, who is cited as being VP of Marketing for Intuit and “helped read the reinvention of Quicken” and served a stint over at Lexar Media.
Gustke likely worked with CEO Eric Stang over at flash memory shop Lexar; Stang was at Lexar for 7 years and took the company through an IPO before it got snapped up by Micron.
Of course, there is the continuing mystery of how then-CMO Rich Buchanan abruptly announced his departure from ooma via Twitter on the same evening as the Super Bowl (February 7, 2010).
The ooma PR saga
HD Voice News has been following Ooma’s path since, well, before the creation of HD Voice News. Ooma was an financial supporter of the website in the winter of 2009 and Buchanan had promised to provide Telo demo/sample hardware when it was available.
However, the hardware didn’t come. Buchanan said the company had so much demand from its channels for the holiday season that it was delaying shipment of hardware for review.
At CES 2010, Ooma announced a whole bunch of features that were in the pipeline, including support for HD voice and its PureVoice technology.
In April 2010, ooma officially rolled its PureVoice technology. HD voice was not on the list. Further, HD Voice News was told that it was “on the list” for review hardware and should see a unit in May. Again, the reason citied for the delay was channel demand for hardware.
A discussion ensued between ooma, its PR company, and HD Voice News both on the delay in shipping review hardware and support for HD voice.
Since then, HD Voice News has not been on the briefing list or received press releases from Ooma’s PR company. And HD Voice News has complained about this on more then one occasion.
Now what?
It would appear ooma has finished shuffling the executive suite (again). This would make the second executive refresh in about 3 years; the first one coming in 2008 when Buchanan and others were brought into the company, followed by CEO Eric Strang in January 2009.
One might argue that ooma has simply gone through a “I want my own team” phase, with CEO Strang bringing on his own people. However, the apparent/alleged bottlenecks in Telo 2.0 hardware, a “lock” around reporting 100,000 subscribers and delays in supporting HD voice would tend to indicate other issues at play.
By Doug Mohney, on August 9th, 2010
Phonewire (www.phonewire.com) has added three improvements to its PhoNETic voicemail transcription service, including HD voice support for “unbeatable accuracy.”
Using HD wideband audio support, Phonewire says PhoNETic provides the “highest voicemail transcription accuracy to date.” The title line of the press release cites up to “99.999% Accuracy.”
Other additions to PhoNETic include Gender ID, providing identification of male or female voice as a part of the transcribed text, and a developer API available for complex integrations.
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