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Is HD voice a differentiator?
I think HD is a great feature, and there many ways it can add value. A great example is the way VoIP Supply is marketing HD now: http://bit.ly/cwUfOa
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4 Answers
Your kidding right? High Definition Voice on telephones now?
Actually, we aren't kidding and there is some sound engineering within this new expanded voice capability. I'm no expert on it, and apologize if I miss the mark on some of my understanding.
I certainly believe that it is a differentiator. Due to the restraints of old copper cable that was used for delivery of telephone service prior to todays digital methods, the frequency used in telephone conversations ranged from about 180 - 3300 hz.
What HD does is expand that frequency from 10 - 10,000 hz, allowing the conversation to include frequencies that in the past were clipped or removed.
This allows for a much richer experience from an improved fidelity in voice quality. Customers I have sold these to tell me they feel like the person is standing in the same room speaking to them.
The question is this, do you go ahead and pay a few dollars more for an HD equipped phone today, knowing the market is shifting to using this technology more, or wait when their costs goes down a bit and buy them then?
I recommend that if you are buying phones today, do not make a sunken investment in technology that may have a quicker road to obsolescense. Invest in this newest technology, enjoy the benefits of it, and the long term improvement to your investment in your office equipment.
Many Vendors are providing High Quality Voice developing specific codecs to work at the same quality of a G711 overt the PSTN, the problem is over IP to safe bw Service Providers use g729 as codec, so if you locally plan to introduce a HD codec , when you make off-net calls by a Service Provider is is possible (sure) you have a path where g729 is used due to trascoding .. therefore you will not take advantage of HD codec at the end!
It definitely is a differentiator; it's the first real new voice feature in decades! HD Voice is a much more comfortable environment for phone users, but I think going beyond that it will add a lot more value to some services. At a recent HD summit Unisys were talking about voicemail systems that support HD and legacy voice (and can transcode between the two), and the possibility of allowing users to access their voicemail in HD through a web portal. This sounds to me like an interesting way to introduce people to the technology and its benefits.
"Monkey" is a prepay offering from Orange that bundles music. It's targetted at teens/twenties that want to stream music to their phones. This is hugely successful today with standard definition phone audio, but I imagine if this were HD for the majority of users, then the service would be unbeatable. Compare this with the approach of Spotify, who have a huge online catalogue and have been very successful recruiting users in Europe. Here you stream music to a PC, or to an internet connected smartphone. Their service is limited to the 15% of the mobile market that has a smartphone, but pretty soon HD-enabled mobile handsets will have much more customer penetration than this.
Thanks for the support Martyn. I see HD mainly as a feature, but it's a good one, and smart companies will find ways to create new value with it. Aside from the above examples, think beyond voice to audio. Sure, HD makes phone calls sound better - which is great for contact centers and sales presentations, but it's also a key element that makes immersive videoconferencing and telepresence so effective. Stretch this a bit further and imagine how this enhances entertainment experiences - watching TV on the Web, streaming video for movies or concerts, and the really big one - interactive gaming. In fact, some of the most innovative breakthroughs in video, voice and 3D collaboration are coming from the likes of Sony, not AT&T.
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