johnr: 2Degrees did not need to wait for Vodafone to enable HD voice

mercutio:

johnr: 2Degrees did not need to wait for Vodafone to enable HD voice

i know, but they said they were "hd ready" and didn't see demand for it yet.  sure, i wanted it before, but i had no options to get it before, and now i do, so that may encourage them to enable it.

i think the only reason that there isn't more demand is because people are used to how bad the quality is right now, and don't realise how much better hd voice is.

SaltyNZ: a) only a small handful of devices in the market that support it - and they tend to cost the best part of $1000 each

allio:

SaltyNZ: a) only a small handful of devices in the market that support it - and they tend to cost the best part of $1000 each

Is this list not applicable to NZ?

SaltyNZ:

allio:

SaltyNZ: a) only a small handful of devices in the market that support it - and they tend to cost the best part of $1000 each

Is this list not applicable to NZ?

Actually, that's more than I thought. Still very smartphone-heavy though which was more my point. Dumb phones outweigh smartphones many to one in the real world. As self-proclaimed Geeks on Geekzone this is something you possibly tend not to notice.

SaltyNZ:

mercutio:

johnr: 2Degrees did not need to wait for Vodafone to enable HD voice

i know, but they said they were "hd ready" and didn't see demand for it yet.  sure, i wanted it before, but i had no options to get it before, and now i do, so that may encourage them to enable it.

i think the only reason that there isn't more demand is because people are used to how bad the quality is right now, and don't realise how much better hd voice is.

The reason there isn't more demand is that there are a) only a small handful of devices in the market that support it - and they tend to cost the best part of $1000 each, and b) it only works on transcoder-free circuits, which to cut a long story short means it won't work between providers, at least not without all three carriers agreeing to introduce transcoder-free interconnects, which will cost a big chunk of time and money and return precisely zero business benefit to any of us.

mercutio:

i got my phone from overseas for $135 USD including shipping, and it's on that list of supported cellphones.  You can buy a Nexus 4 new today for $400 NZ (http://www.warehousestationery.co.nz/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/WSL-B2C-Site/en_NZ/-/NZD/ViewOfferDetail-Product?ProductRef=214182@WSL-B2C&utm_source=B2Cwebstore&utm_medium=CMLandingPage&utm_campaign=WK16ClickMadness&utm_content=Nexus+4)

Already the cellphone networks overload for phone calls when there are major events, and yet continue to work for data.  It could be argued that this suggests that their call forwarding abilities aren't adequete currently,

and it's computationally more expensive to transcode than pass data through directly.  It also creates lower quality.

I'd rather have even just 2degrees to 2degrees hd voice at first than nothing.

 I'm sure the transcoding interconnected shouldn't be that complicated, i don't see how it's vastly different than voip systems doing passthrough g722 and g729 when supported, and transcoding for g711 interconnects.

SaltyNZ: The reason there isn't more demand is that there are a) only a small handful of devices in the market that support it - and they tend to cost the best part of $1000 each, and b) it only works on transcoder-free circuits, which to cut a long story short means it won't work between providers, at least not without all three carriers agreeing to introduce transcoder-free interconnects, which will cost a big chunk of time and money and return precisely zero business benefit to any of us.

timmmay:

SaltyNZ: The reason there isn't more demand is that there are a) only a small handful of devices in the market that support it - and they tend to cost the best part of $1000 each, and b) it only works on transcoder-free circuits, which to cut a long story short means it won't work between providers, at least not without all three carriers agreeing to introduce transcoder-free interconnects, which will cost a big chunk of time and money and return precisely zero business benefit to any of us.

I'd have thought the business benefit were customer satisfaction and enabling the marketing departing to use another buzzword, as well as keeping up with the Jones's. The cost-benefit analysis probably doesn't pan out though.

allio:

SaltyNZ: a) only a small handful of devices in the market that support it - and they tend to cost the best part of $1000 each

Is this list not applicable to NZ?

mercutio:   I'm sure the transcoding interconnected shouldn't be that complicated, i don't see how it's vastly different than voip systems doing passthrough g722 and g729 when supported, and transcoding for g711 interconnects.

sbiddle:

mercutio:   I'm sure the transcoding interconnected shouldn't be that complicated, i don't see how it's vastly different than voip systems doing passthrough g722 and g729 when supported, and transcoding for g711 interconnects.

Transcoding is the root of all evil. On a VoIP interconnect for example transcoding should never occur to allow G.711 - G.722 or G.729 should be supported if available but every system should support G.711 and this be used as a fallback option.

mercutio:

sbiddle:

mercutio:   I'm sure the transcoding interconnected shouldn't be that complicated, i don't see how it's vastly different than voip systems doing passthrough g722 and g729 when supported, and transcoding for g711 interconnects.

Transcoding is the root of all evil. On a VoIP interconnect for example transcoding should never occur to allow G.711 - G.722 or G.729 should be supported if available but every system should support G.711 and this be used as a fallback option.

i thought a lot of VOIP systems were using GSM.  Overseas call centres are always terrible for me.

I would rather use straight through G711 or straight through G722.  But some people seem to want to use G729, and it's not unreasonable to only allow G711.  So at some point transcoding has to happen.  It seems to be extra bad when there is NZ number that goes to Australia, India, the US etc..  Even from a landline without double compression.

I suppose the most likely candidate for getting high def audio to people right now with the most common success is Skype, but unfortunately Skype uses a lot of battery on smartphones.