[asterisk-dev] G.729.1 - any interest?

[John Todd]

The G.729.1 "wideband" codec is starting to show a slight bit of  
traction.  There is a possibility that Asterisk could support G.729.1  
- would you use it or buy it if it was available?  More importantly,  
does any equipment with which your systems currently exchange traffic  
support G.729.1?  Currently, the number of devices supporting G.729.1  
seems to be fairly limited and it may be an imbalanced decision to  
support a codec that nobody else uses.

If G.729.1 were to be offered as a codec for Asterisk by Digium, it  
would have to be as a commercial product, as the codec is patent- 
encumbered.  Pricing and licensing terms are outside the scope of this  
discussion, but I would expect something like G.729.  Of course,  
passthrough-mode (non-transcoding) would not require licensing with  
Asterisk and is outside of the scope of this question.  Timing is also  
an unknown issue - there are obviously many other projects in the  
pipeline for the Digium engineering team to work on before this  
probably could be completed, even if the decision is made to pursue a  
development effort.


Note that G.722 is free and already available, and may have similar  
MOS scores (but certainly not exactly similar) as that of G.729.1.   
Comparisons of G.729.1 and G.722 are left as exercises to the reader,  
or see the excellent presentation below which is quite enlightening.

Your opinions are welcome on the topic!

Resources:
http://portal.etsi.org/stq/workshop2007presentations/quinquis_slides.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.729.1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.722

[Apologies for the cross-post - this has some interest to both the  
user and development community, I think.  I'll also apologize for what  
is a post about issues that are not "open-source", but it seems that  
within Digium I'm probably the most appropriate person to canvass the  
community on this particular question, as it involves gauging the  
general thinking of the VoIP community and is not merely a Digium-only  
concern.]

JT


---
John Todd                       email:jtodd at digium.com
Digium, Inc. | Asterisk Open Source Community Director
445 Jan Davis Drive NW -  Huntsville AL 35806  -   USA
direct: +1-256-428-6083         http://www.digium.com/