Microsoft's Secret Codec Weapon? One fact that hasn't gotten any attention from the mainstream media (& tech media) coverage of OCS 2007 is the VoIP and video codec Microsoft is using. During my conversation with Microsoft they kept talking about how Office Communicator's VoIP works well not only in broadband environments, but also in limited bandwidth narrowband environments, i.e. dial-up -- and even on Windows Mobile 5 devices. They stressed how their codec works well even with high packet loss due to Forward Error Correction (FEC) and other algorithms. I inquired whose codec they were using and they said that they developed it themselves. This was a bit of a surprise since there are at least two well-known adaptive VoIP codecs available, including Spirit DSP, and Global IP Sound (GIPS), which is used by Skype (News - Alert), Google Talk, and a plethora of other softphones. When I asked if Microsoft considered using/licensing the GIPS codec, Microsoft stated that they were in talks with Global IP Sound (News - Alert), but chose to go their own way, to avoid the licensing costs, but more importantly Microsoft stated that their own performance benchmarks showed their codec performed better. Relatedly, Psytechnics said Microsoft's codec performed better than Cisco 7961 IP Phones. Wow, score one for software-based digital signal processing (Microsoft) over a hardware DSP (Cisco). I meant to ask Microsoft is they planned on offering their software codec for license, which would compete with Spirit DSP and GIPS, but forgot. However, just from various conversations, it didn't seem like that was their goal. But if Microsoft did license their technology or worse - give it away for free, then Spirit DSP and GIPS could be in trouble.
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