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I have a question to developers which is all about the subject: are there any plans on including iLBC codec into the product soon? My customers are requesting for an access to our corporate VoIP network using their 3G-capable devices. Unfortunately neither G711 nor GSM do not provide sufficient voice quality.

iLBC support definitely is on our roadmap and will be integrated into AGEphone Desktop and Mobile eventually. Unless there is a specific project this might not happen tomorrow or next week as all our programmers are very busy on other fronts, but I will continue to bring up the subject. If you are interested in purchasing a larger volume of licenses (see the mail I wrote you) making my point would definitely be easier. Just contact me under michael // ageet // com and I am sure that we can work something out!

I have read and replied to your e-mail. And I'd like to thank you once again for your attention.

Meanwhile here is some info which may be of some interest for you. Over the last two days I have managed to do some testing with Nokia's SIP client which, as you may know, has iLBC and G729 support. The point of interest for me is to get a mobile device connected to our corporate network over VPN using 3G coverage. The device is supposed to be connected to an Asterisk PBX box.

Unfortunately, 3G coverage isn't good over here. I have tried your product, but neither G711.ulaw nor GSM gave me sufficient sound quality. The hope was for iLBC as it is promising better wide-band support. It turned out to be wrong. Despite of assimetric nature of 3G networks iLBC displays good outgoing voice quality against terrible incoming distortions.

It could be a problem of Nokia's codec implementation, dunno. But these tests make me wondering if iLBC is of any use whatsoever. So far, only G729 does the proper job for me. But this is due to it's very low bandwidth requirements only.

Thank you for the information! Do you think that a low bandwidth Speex implementation might solve your problem? The codec should perform reasonably well at around 8 kbit/s and we could add support rather quickly. AFAIK, the standard Asterisk configuration does not offer Speex support, but you could add the codec manually if this is of interest to you.

It sound like an attractive option. There is only one drawback it has. Speex support in Asterisk is quite CPU demanding. But if it provides much higher quality - who cares?

The only thing I'm afraid of for now is that my bosses would push me toward Nokia's solution. It's not what suits me well for a number of reasons however I can only propose but not choose. I'd feel sorry if you guys waste your time and final decision will be made in favor of Nokia.

I think I can give you a definite answer on the prospects for G.729 next week - it does not look good as it turned out that even without the libraries there are initials ($7,500 - $40,000 USD) and minimum annual license fees ($5,000 - $6,000 USD) that without a larger contract are hard to cover for a small company like ours in the current economic climate...

So our hope lies with Speex which we can and will definitely integrate no matter the outcome of your company's decision. You can tell your bosses that this solution will work just fine with at least toll quality (like G.729). If the the decision falls pro WM I think I could justify asking our programmers taking a while off to integrate the codec... especially since we have it in AGEphone Desktop 2 already.