Before the Dawn of IP Telephony - Part 31Expression discovered in human voice (fall 2002)
These contents translated a serialization article carried by ITPro IP telephony ONLINE published by Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. Jump to the original (Japanese).
Shinji Usuba
General Manager
eSound Venture Unit
Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd
After obtaining the chip handling broadband voice, I decided to give it a test. After much effort in obtaining a handset, I was disappointed to find that the voice I heard was no different from a normal phone.
No drastic improvement. In fact, the voice was no different from a conventional telephone. I was deeply disappointed after hearing the much anticipated "broadband voice."
Does majority of the composition making up the human voice lie within the bandwidth of the conventional telephone? If so, does that mean there is essentially no effect even when widening the bandwidth passing voice?
Photo 1: OKI's Annex 5 where the test was conducted
The laboratory was located on the 7th floor.
After several hours, however, there was a report from Toru checking the prototype device saying there was an error in the parameter setting. He had discovered the error and was just finished making the needed adjustment. I was starting to see a glimpse of hope. Hoping things would turn out different this time, I returned to the laboratory and stood in front of the receiver again (photo 1).
We have to commercialize this
I picked up the prototype receiver that has just been made and adjusted, and held it to my ear.
"Hello?"
It was an electrifying moment. When I heard the voice through the receiver, I distinctly remember struck by a sensation of darkness instantaneously becoming bright as day before my eyes. It was a moment I will never forget. What I heard was a voice with overwhelming spatial properties.
I was made aware that human voice was rich in uniqueness, like a facial expression. And I could feel the expression through the receiver.
My first and immediate impression was, "Hey, I must have one of these."
I was convinced that the reason why broadband telephones didn't become popular during ISDN was not because of the voice quality being the same as conventional telephones.
At the same time, images of various applications ran through my head like a revolving lantern.
I quickly called my associate, Hiromi Aoyanagi, who was in another room. As he raised the receiver to his ears, I spoke into mine.
"Hello?"
Immediately, the expression of Hiromi's face changed while holding the receiver in his hand. I vaguely remember the details of the short exchange we made through the receivers, but I will never forget the excitement I felt directly from his voice. As we exchanged a few words, we were able to sense the expression of one another's voices rather than the content of the messages themselves. And we knew that we were thinking of the same thing.
"We have to commercialize this."
Voice quality of IP telephony can go beyond conventional telephones
The prototype was only a device made for communicating with broadband voice. Full development of broadband VoIP will obviously be needed for commercialization. VoIP of high voice quality cannot be realized simply by replacing the codec. Other than the codec, new developments of technologies unique to VoIP will be necessary including broadband echo canceller, guarantee of voice quality from packet loss, etc.
I had absolute confidence in the commercialization if we could get the development going. Needless to day, development requires a funding. And at the time, neither Hiromi nor I was in the position of product planning as we were in charge of product development. In order to proceed with research and development, agreement of funding must be obtained by gaining recognition of the value concerning the product you had in mind. In a company, product planning could not be initiated on ideas or hunches.
Our instincts told us to go for it. Obviously, instincts will not lead to funding. Although we were aware of the value, merchantability and marketability, we had no data as evidence to logically support our beliefs. And even before we got to the planning of broadband VoIP, we needed the development of fundamental technologies for realizing the product and cutting down cost.
We dwelled on a plan to at least get us to that point. We even thought of voluntarily coming in on off-days to proceed with development. But we were facing deadlines of our own back at the development site. And the work we were originally doing required us to work to late hours on a daily basis. Increasing the amount of overtime or coming in on our days off was nearly impossible.
We decided to search for a department within the company that would likely sponsor us. Needless to say, each department dedicate its full energy to the expansion of matter at hand, and is reluctant to invest in an unknown product, especially when it is for something they are uncertain whether it will sell or not. But some showed interest and helped us in acquiring a budget.
Despite my true efforts, we were unable to get a funding. We were starting to feel a sense of stagnation, since we knew this would take a lot of time.
But the opportunity came from an unexpected place.
... To be continued
