It was very interesting to read Michael Graves’ “Rant” on softphones. What I found intriguing was that it seemed to be all about the need for wideband audio (and G.722). Wideband audio is defined by 16 kHZ sampling frequency (compared to 8 kHz sampling for narrowband used in regular telephony), which also doubles to audio bandwidth and provides fidelity closer to CD quality than the clunky telephony quality we are used to.

Skype is to me a softphone, and I see them as the enabler of the softphone market providing the breakthrough for desktop VoIP. The 2 major reasons for Skype’s success were that their service actually worked, and their high audio quality. They were able to raise the bar on audio quality largely because they had robust wideband audio from the get go. Codec wise, Skype has always been proprietary (proprietary vs. standards is another long story) and I think G.722 is old circuit switched technology not very well suited for packet networks.

Google Talk is in my book an even higher quality “softphone” (it seems like Google is never happy with anything but the best) and of course also wideband audio (using the GIPS iSAC codec).