Before the Dawn of IP Telephony - Part 33Attaining enlightenment of broadband VoIP (2003 ~)
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
The program that started from the concept of "a telephone with superior voice quality" had made me realize that voice quality only amounted to a small percent of "broadband voice" by the time program ended.
I initially thought of eSound as the end result of full IP network. But I began to gradually feel that eSound would accelerate full IP network itself. In other words, I felt that the concept of users being motivated to shift to a full IP network by using eSound would be more acceptable as an approach to the market. In this case, there is the need to establish a new and different value rather than the simple approach of voice quality of conventional telephones becoming better.
Broadband VoIP will exceed real communication
During broadband VoIP communication, there is a sense of realism that is beyond normal face-to-face communication. Some may say that this is absurd since voice converted to electric signals through a network simply cannot exceed real communication. That was also my initial belief. However, broadband VoIP does exceed real communication made on daily basis.
Picture a scene of real conversation. During a real, daily conversation, there is normally a distance of one meter or more from the other party. Conversations take place in various scenes of our daily consumption activities. When you are buying an expensive consumer product such as a car, communication is usually made on opposite ends of a table. Even when you are buying something inexpensive such as an accessory or a small article, communication takes place on opposite ends of a counter. In other words, the distance from the mouth of the person talking and the ears of the person listening in the real world of communication is normally one meter or more. Although waves emitted from the person talking is transmitted to the recipient through air, the voice is with certainty deteriorated by the time it reaches the ears of the recipient. How about telephones? The distance between the speaker and the microphone is a few centimeters. The distance between the ear of the recipient and the receiver is almost zero since they are in contact with one another. In reality, telephones have the potential of exceeding real communication since the distance between the mouth and ear is extremely short.
Why does voice on the phone sound so distant?
The telephone network has already been completely digitalized and there should be no deterioration in voice quality on the network. Regardless, why does voice on the phone sound so far away when the mouth of the speaker and the ear of the recipient are so close?
The main reason is that not all of the composition making up the human voice is transmitted. To be honest, the technology of the conventional telephone network limits the application to transmitting messages and cuts the composition of human voice by more than a half to realize widespread of telephones. The 3.4kHz bandwidth and 8kHz base sampling were determined as the minimal bandwidths necessary for comprehending messages.
For the conventional telephone network, the real potential of telephones was limited as a result of deciding how far the quality can be decreased for widely providing the infrastructure. And the telephone did indeed disseminate widely as a communication tool that anyone can own. There is no mistake that the telephone supported the social infrastructure as a groundbreaking tool allowing communication in real time that goes beyond the boundary of time and distance by sacrificing voice quality.
Then, what about the generation of full IP networks?
There have already been investments centering on a number of carriers to facilitate the IP network through innovation of technologies on a continuous basis. The transmission bandwidth on the network side, combining voice encoding methods and technical innovations, is no longer a dominating factor that determines infrastructure cost. In other words, the state for fully exerting the characteristics of the tool called a telephone where people place their mouth and ear is ready. If the broadband voice of the speaker can be converted to IP packets and transmitted to the ear of the recipient in the original form, real communication that goes beyond face-to-face communication can be realized.
In detail, what can super-real communication by broadband VoIP realize?
Since the composition of the human voice can be transmitted, it is possible to identify who is talking. You can feel a sense of comfort hearing the voice of someone close to you. It would also be possible to express a feeling or mood that words normally cannot express such as a sigh. You can even talk in whispers to one another by getting your mouth closer to the ear on a network.
Playful communication like a mother and her child getting their faces close together can be made on the network. Passionate communication of love can also be made. Communication involving anger and communication expressing appreciation are also possibilities. Communication that required the two parties to move and meet in person will now be possible on a network. I hear that many users of broadband VoIP and eSound have become closer to each other going beyond emotional barriers. They have false sensations that they can see into the hearts of others. In the end, what was the ultimate concept of eSound?
Fig. 1 Reference introducing the concept of eSound
... To be continued
