Replies to post #20845 on InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[Eneerg]

Nokia's wideband speech codec technology chosen for CDMA2000

By John Walko
CommsDesign.com
April 25, 2003 (10:00 a.m. EST)


LONDON — Standards setting organization 3GPP2 has chosen Nokia's Variable-Rate Multi-Mode Wideband speech codec (VMR-WB) technology as its proposed specification for a CDMA2000 wideband speech codec from a field of five competing proposals.

The VMR-WB speech codec is said to offer excellent wideband speech quality at data rates comparable to current narrowband speech codecs, resulting in highly intelligible and natural speech that represents a big advance over the quality of both today's wireless and wireline networks.

The Nokia technology is fully compliant with the CDMA2000 rate-set II, and, importantly, is interoperable with the AMR-WB standard selected by the 3GPP for use in GSM/WCDMA networks. This interoperability between the two flavors of CDMA is important as it allows high-value voice services to be used between mobile customers across the globe, regardless of the network standard that each customer is using.

"The selection of the VMR-WB technology by the 3GPP2 is a reflection of both Nokia's continued leadership in third-generation standards forums and the long-term commitment of Nokia to invest in CDMA research and development," said Adam Gould, vice president of technology management and strategy, CDMA for Nokia Mobile Phones.

"This new technology will deliver new levels of service for end-users and a point of differentiation for operators in the area of voice quality, which continues to be an important service issue. Additionally, this combination will allow wireless operators to more aggressively compete in the wireline replacement market", Gould added in a statement.

The VMR-WB codec is engineered to guarantee a high level of performance under severe channel error and background noise conditions to allow the delivery of a variety of applications under a wide range of conditions. The technology will be used for mobile-to-mobile wideband voice calls, voice over IP (VoIP), mobile or fixed network audio conferencing, point-to-point and multi-point business applications, multimedia streaming and videoconferencing.