AudioCodes, a company best known for easing the transition to all-IP networks, recently added OPUS support to its 400HD series of IP phones. This means that these devices can now handle real-time HD communication between WebRTC endpoints and SIP-based contact centers, as well as traditional unified communications solutions.
According to AudioCodes, supporting WebRTC will become important for business communications. Indeed, the technology is expected to have a significant impact on all IP-based communications, at the very least making browser-based communications much more common.
"WebRTC will drive new ways of communicating between consumers and businesses," said Yehuda Herscovici, vice president of Products at AudioCodes, in a statement. "The ability to preserve voice quality and communicate seamlessly is becoming of paramount importance for enterprises to capture this opportunity. Our OPUS-enabled IP Phone is expected become a key player in this arena."
AudioCodes' 400HD line of IP phones — which recently attained Lync qualification through the Microsoft Lync Third Party Interoperability Program — offer high definition voice quality, a full duplex speaker phone, robust security mechanisms, out of the box global redirection server support and a multi-language user interface. Currently, this IP phone family has three models: the 420HD SIP IP Phone, the 430HD and the 440HD.
WebRTC currently leverages the legacy narrowband G.711 codec, or the new wideband OPUS, codec to support voice communications. For obvious reasons — namely resiliency to network conditions and the ability to accommodate available bandwidth in best-effort networks — AudioCodes has chosen to support OPUS.
The company plans to enable native support for OPUS in the final quarter of this year, resulting in superior end-to-end voice quality between WebRTC endpoints and 400HD IP phones — without the need for transcoding.
Those looking to learn more about AudioCodes' first forray into WebRTC can do so at the upcoming WebRTC Conference and Expo in Atlanta where the company's senior director of strategic marketing for North America, Alan Percy, will discuss the opportunities created by WebRTC for contact centers and unified communications.
Edited by
Stefania Viscusi
