CODEC

Hardware in a phone and in the cell network that compresses digitized voice prior to transmission AND takes received compressed voice and decompresses it prior to passing it to either a cell phone speaker or into a wireline system. Codec allows the cell network to essentially pass a lot of data in compressed form to permit additional users on the system and to save bandwidth. The idea behind codec is that human voices are highly lossy and a significant amount of the conversation can be removed since human ears can fill in the removed gaps at the other end. Each technology has different codec algorithms -- for CDMA there is 13K and 8K.