MEDIA RELEASE PR38147
VoiceAge Announces the Launch of the AMR-WB/G.722.2 Speech Compression Standards Patent Pool
MONTREAL, Feb. 2 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ --
VoiceAge Corporation is pleased to announce the launch of a joint
licensing program for the AMR-WB/G.722.2 Speech Compression Standard. The
group of telecom leaders composed of Ericsson, France Telecom/Orange, Nokia
and VoiceAge have joined their efforts to provide users with simplified
access to the technology through the newly formed patent pool.
The patent pool will provide end product developers with convenient,
fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory access to a portfolio of essential
worldwide patents under a single license agreement. Other patent owners
wishing to join the pool are invited to submit their patents to the same
essentiality evaluation process that the founding members were submitted to.
Through this patent pool, license agreements can be obtained for the
following: VoIP infrastructure and devices, wireless and non-wireless
telecommunications and multimedia infrastructure products (such as base
stations, base station controllers, radio network controllers, switching
centers, gateways and servers), professional content applications (off-line
content transcoders and professional content creation tools) and downloaded
content applications (such as consumer content creation tools and media
players) .
AMR-WB is the mandatory codec in GSM and WCDMA networks for
conversational and multimedia services when these services evolve to wideband
speech (7 kHz audio bandwidth). In addition, the deployment of G722.2 in the
wire line network will result in better quality services by removing the need
for transcoding between the two networks. In 2009, mobile phone carrier
Orange introduced High Definition (HD) Voice, which makes use of the AMR-WB
speech codec, in its mobile network in Moldova and is planning to rollout the
service in Belgium and the UK in 2010 and the rest of the network shortly
after.
"The time has come for both wireless and wire line networks to evolve to
better quality voice applications and services. There is an increasing demand
for deployment of the AMR-WB/G.722.2 standard in these networks. Therefore,
it became imperative to establish a licensing program to simplify access to
the technology. Another key objective was to provide a market enabling
royalty structure to allow penetration of the technology in all markets,"
says VoiceAge President Laurent Amar.
For more information on licensing terms and conditions, please contact
VoiceAge at licensing_VA@voiceage.com.
About AMR-WB/G722.2
The Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) is the first wideband codec
(~50 to 7000 Hz) to be standardized for both wireless (3GPP) and wireline
(ITU-T Recommendation G.722.2) applications. It is the ideal codec for
wideband speech applications across converging wireline/wireless networks as
is reflected by the status of AMR-WB as the mandatory wideband codec in 3GPP
wireless and TISPAN NGN system specifications. It utilizes the ACELP(R)
(Algebraic Code Excited Linear Prediction) technology and this codec consists
of nine bit rates from 6.6 to 23.85 kbps and includes VAD/DTX/CNG features
for increased efficiency.
About VoiceAge
VoiceAge Corporation is a forerunner in the development and dissemination
of speech and audio compression technologies and solutions for the Internet
(VoIP), wireless (cellular 2G, 2.5G, 3G and Wi-Fi and WiMAX), fixed/mobile
converged networks and consumer electronic devices. Our active participation
in numerous international telecommunication standards organizations (3GPP,
3GPP2, ITU-T and MPEG) and our extensive ongoing experience as developers of
codec implementations for diverse platforms and environments have nurtured
world-class expertise that we bring to each new project. Today VoiceAge(R)
speech and audio codec solutions, using designs based on our flagship
ACELP(R) technology platform, deliver unsurpassed quality experienced daily
by hundreds of millions of users worldwide. VoiceAge is the licensing
administrator for the AMR, AMR-WB and AMR-WB+ patent pools.
SOURCE: VoiceAge Corporation
CONTACT: VoiceAge Marketing,
+1-514-737-4940,
marketing@voiceage.com
NEWS 
