Imagine voice-recognition applications that are 99.9 percent accurate. Or international calls where there’s no need to strain to make out what an accented speaker is saying. These and similar applications are the reason high-definition voice is evolving from “nice to have” to “have to have” status, and why service providers are beginning to embrace it as an important differentiator in the crowded business market.
Even though voice calls have been around for more than a century and remain the primary component of telecom portfolios, little has been done to move the needle on quality, the most important element. That’s finally changing with the advent of enhanced IP applications. “I used to wonder how much teeth HD voice really has as an innovation,” said Bill Bumbernick, CEO of hosted VoIP provider Alteva LLC. “It’s nice to have a clearer phone call — but what else does it do besides that? But then we realized that a lot of development initiatives for new services are held up by voice quality issues.”
For instance, consider the call center, where the accuracy when using standard voice is just not where it needs to be for more advanced applications to be useful as business tools. If a company wanted a voice recognition application within phone calls to look for and tag certain words in a conversation (for recording, storing and indexing purposes), HD voice increases that accuracy immeasurably, making that application something that can really optimize the way a company’s customer service department is run. And that, in turn, directly affects that business’ brand image and ultimate success.
HD voice has been around for a while, implemented within businesses using IP-converged LANs and HD endpoints from companies like Polycom Inc.. The problem of course lies in enabling businesses (and consumers, for that matter) to talk in HD to outside parties — partners, suppliers, customers, consultants, service organizations and the like — an increasingly important point as the world moves toward more cloud applications, more mobility and more complex value chains. This is what becomes enabled when service providers implement the technology within their networks, in a standardized way.
Upgrading requires an infrastructure refresh, but once a carrier breaks down the barriers, it becomes a key differentiator for them when it comes to the above-mentioned applications — pure gold when playing in the competitive business market.
Case in point is the health care field, where applications like HD voice- and video-conferencing for telemedicine can bolster efficiency and allow for better patient care. The health care industry consists of a wide range of stakeholders — from independent doctors and nurses to clinics and hospitals, plus the insurance companies, consultants and the patients themselves. “Clarity of communications and accuracy is vital in that vertical, for everything from patient consultations to the calling in of prescriptions,” explains John Macario, senior vice president of product strategy and management at CLEC Optimum Lightpath, which announced its upgrade to HD voice on its Metro Ethernet backbone last week. “The whole notion is that as we can make technology and products smarter, and that enables businesses to act smarter. HD voice is one key to that.”
And that’s a message likely to resonate.
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