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

[Steve Underwood]

John Todd wrote:
> 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.]
>   
Where have you seen it getting traction? France Telecom came up with it, 
and are using it, but that's kind of isolated from the rest of the 
universe. The PDF you referenced is little more than a France Telecoms 
sales pitch for G.729.1. Audiocodes announced something, but its vague 
and they aren't shipping yet. AMR-WB would make more sense, as 3G 
cellphones all use it, and transcoding these things looses huge amounts 
of quality. G.722.1 is also getting somewhere, largely because of 
Polycom's commitment to it.

The really wacky one is G.711.1. Has anyone heard of people taking that 
seriously.

Regards,
Steve