[Asterisk-Users] Prices of g729 codec

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

On Saturday 03 June 2006 16:57, trixter aka Bret McDanel wrote:
> but $10 only gets you one license, what if you are vonage sized and need
> to support a million customers?  What if you accept that you can settle

If you are Vonage and need to support a million customers I will bet you are 
not transcoding a million conversations on regular PC hardware.  You will 
have AS5300/5400 boxes or MaxTNTs, which you have already paid WELL MORE than 
$2M for, which INCLUDES the AudioCodes patent license for g.729.

You can't avoid it and stay legit.  Sorry to burst your bubble.

> for a 5:1 ratio, then its only 200,000 or $2M.  Just for codec licenses,
> not to mention all the other costs of being a business.  What if you are
> smaller than vonage, say 10k channels in use, then that smaller entity,
> probably without the hundreds of millions of VC that vonage got you
> would have to come up with $100k.  Still more than $10.

Again, 10k channels you'll have a half dozen MaxTNT boxes terminating DS3s.  
Your fixed costs will already be significantly higher and that little $10 
license fee is included in that.

> If you are going to bring businesses into it, at least accept that a
> business would most likely pay more than $10 for their licensing needs.

Nonsense.  The license fee that Digium charges is for onesie-twosie stuff.  If 
you're making a real go of this as a business you will be paying that patent 
license fee either through Digium (if you're transcoding on PCs, in which 
case you are either doing something different or you're just plain stupid) or 
you are paying a smaller patent license fee which was included in the price 
of the hardware on your NAS equipment.

> no its not that they want quantity becuase they will sell just one
> license, they only want to deal with people that implement the systems
> not the end users of the system.  They claim the reasoning for this is
> to make it easier for end users to know that they have licenses -
> basically if you have it you are licensed.  Even if that isnt the case.
> Check www.sipro.com for more info on g729 licensing.

It's always easier to work with businesses and deal with quantity than it is 
to deal with the public or end customer and all the hassles with that.  I'm 
positive that AudioCodes doesn't want to staff a customer service department 
to deal with Joe Sixpack who's cousin's friend's son "is a computer whiz" and 
hooked up this "phone over teh intarweeb" thingie for him but he just can't 
it working perfect.

-A.