Earlier this week I listened to a webinar from CommuniGate on HD voice. (In fair disclosure they are a customer.) It was interesting because you had three companies in the chain of HD voice – GIPS, CommuniGate and Deutsche Telekom.

The benefits of HD Voice were discussed and the subject also addressed why network operators should view it as an excellent value added service particularly for the SMB market. While the main focus of VoIP services to date has been cost reduction over quality, HD voice heralds a new generation of high-fidelity voice communication services, which allows business and consumer users to have a more natural and reliable voice communication experience than ever before.

Mobile operators are missing significant revenue opportunities in the SMB market where workers on the “move” need increasingly reliable high-fidelity voice quality to interact freely with other users and automated systems. It is estimated that the worldwide SMB market for VoIP services will reach $10.4 billion by 2014. Most of this revenue potential, however, will be directly dependent on how well integrated and easy to use various media will be, and to what extent it will deliver quality features not previously available to SMBs at accessible price points.

CommuniGate is beating the HD voice drum to get carriers to listen. Their MobileOffice, a Unified Communications hosting platform, enables network operators to deliver high-value, HD Voice enabled communication solutions to Small Businesses. To explain CommuniGate’s offering in more detail they have released a whitepaper that looks at FMC as the bridge of two “HD capable” networks; the mobile and the Broadband IP Network (Internet).

What I especially like about CommuniGate is they don’t just talk HD voice, they act on their beliefs. To make sure everyone “gets” the HD voice message – they’re offering a free trial. So rather than read about HD voice, why don’t you try it out for yourself.

There are many things in our daily lives that we come to accept and have given up questioning as to why we tolerate it. From shoddy call centre service from credit card companies (“please press 1”, “please press # to listen to all your options again”, “sorry I didn’t understand that command, please call back goodbye”), short-changed at the below-average lunch place, (yes I still go!), no phone signal in the centre of the City to the daily bus driver who waits to see me running before he takes off for the next stop.

However, it looks like there’s a chance I can get my voice back when I read about Orange announcing it will be the first to offer mobile High Definition (HD) Voice for its customers in the UK – well a trial anyway with full nationwide roll-out due later in 2010

HD Voice offers sound quality that my concert-damaged ears can understand. As a company with offices across the globe and people I have to talk with people across different continents with varying accents, which can often be difficult to understand over the telephone. I accepted it for too long but now that issue is resolved when I’m able to use Nimbuzz, Yahoo or CommuniGate to speak with HD Voice clarity. However, often I’m stuck talking on a mobile with terrible-I’ve always put up with this – sound quality.

News that Orange is stepping ahead with HD Voice should send shudders down their competitor’s spines. There’s very little to differentiate one mobile service to another – they might tell us there is but really? However, HD voice on a mobile telephone that’s a huge differentiator for a device that is designed principally to talk.

As the baby boom generation go gently into retirement and their hearing deteriorates the offer of HD voice will be attractive. As too, will all the younger generation who have endured countless noise exploding concerts, nightclubs and iPod blasting music…HD voice must be and will be heard.

I’m a firm believer that HD Voice will herald a new era for mobile communications and a new standard for the telecoms industry – however, it’s that domino effect  that companies such as Nimbuzz, Yahoo, Google, Skype and CommuniGate that herald change – let’s hope there are some other mobile carriers that will brave an HD world.

So if you want your voice heard come and meet with GIPS next month in Paris at the upcoming HD summit and hear the difference.

How to Implement HD-Voice Successfully is the subject of our Telephony Online Webinar on Wednesday October 28. Personally I would have liked to use the above title, as it’s very true.

“T’ain’t What You Do It’s the Way That You Do It,” is an old jazz song most famously sang by Ella Fitzgerald in 1939 – about the same time the last improvement was made to voice/sound quality on the telephone.  Never a more true term was said when it comes to HD voice – it’s the way that you do it.

Personally I think HD voice will become de rigueur eventually   – Why would you want to have bad quality when your competitors will offer better solutions? – but trying to cobble a solution together without decades of speech and signal processing expertise is likely to cause a company severe headaches, time delays and frustration not to mention money. So hopefully some of you will be able to join our webinar to learn more about:

• What is actually required for HD voice?
• How do you deal with all the inherent issues of IP networks that constantly effect call quality?
• How do you choose an HD voice codec?
• Case study in HD voice deployment

As a bonus CommuniGate Systems will also join our webinar to discuss their Unified Communications solution, which offers HD voice, for enterprises and carriers.

In-Stat’s analyst Keith Nissen predicts that the HD voice market is expected to grow to more than $3 billion a year. I’d also add that it offers a first-class communication experience with greater intelligibility, comfort and experience without the audio fatigue that conference and telephone calls suffer from currently.

It’s Friday, so I’ll leave you with this version of the song (click image below) from 80’s bands Fun Boy Three and Bananarama because remember: It Ain’t What You Do It’s The Way That You Do It!

Today GIPS announced that CommuniGate Systems will utilize our VoiceEngine PC solution to enable their Flash-based rich media application called Pronto!. While this is obviously great news for GIPS, I think the real story here is about the evolution of VoIP and the maturation of the Unified Communications market.

About 10 years ago, it seemed like the VoIP market was very equipment and enterprise focused. Companies could cut costs by migrating to IP PBXs for their phone systems, and carriers could similarly reduce costs by routing their backhaul traffic over IP. Then about 5 years ago we saw an explosion of PC-based IM/softphone applications, like Skype and Google Talk, that delivered high quality calling to consumers for free or very low costs.  The last couple years have been about the convergence of those paradigms in the form of Unified Communications applications. CommuniGate and Pronto! offer a perfect example of technology that is on the cutting edge of the UC trend.

While cost reduction was the main driver behind the early VoIP trends, features, functionality and ease of use are all crucial for the UC market. By combining email, IM, calendar, presence and VoIP functionality, Pronto! incorporates pretty much every form of communication in one application. In addition, the Flash-based UI is the ideal solution for hosted services looking for a lightweight, easy-to-use client. The result is a really cool application that gives users everything they want at their finger tips.

One implication of the UC boom is that “VoIP” as a term is becoming less relevant, and is simply the method for delivering voice to these next generation applications. This should be viewed as a positive development, as it signals the market has matured to the point where users have come to expect high quality voice to be included in a variety of applications, and that voice is still a primary mode of communication for most people.