Voxbone, a provider of inbound VoIP services to carriers, ITSP's, calling card operators, call centers and other businesses globally, reportedly announced that its international, geographically-independent number service, iNum, will now support high-definition voice.

 

Initially, the company will begin its HD support with the wideband G.722 codec and in add other codecs in the fourth quarter of this year.

 

INum number service aids users with billing as local calls when dialed through participating carriers anywhere in the world. To allow HD calling, the company has added a uniform identifier to its iNum service.

 

With high-definition, Voice IP-to-IP Calls to iNum numbers can be answered anywhere with high sound quality that can far surpass traditional circuit-switched telephony.

 

“In equipping our iNum numbers with high-definition voice, we are bringing a key piece – a uniform identifier – to the emerging HD ecosystem,” said Rod Ullens, CEO at Voxbone, in a statement. “Many endpoints and a lot of isolated networks, such as Skype (News - Alert), already support HD, but there needs to be a standard way for any service provider to reach a particular HD endpoint. HD-enabled iNum offers the perfect solution.”

 

Prefaced with the International Telephone Union assigned 883 code, iNum numbers refer to the Internet in the same way that 44 refers internationally to the U.K. and 1 refers to the U.S. A call to an iNum number is routed first to Voxbone (News - Alert), which carries it over the expensive, long-distance leg of the route before delivering it to the appropriate service provider, which terminates the call to its subscriber.

 

With this announcement on the support of HD, the company also clarified that from now on most iNum calls will now support HD voice because most iNum traffic is transmitted by service providers who have migrated to IP or have started operating as VoIP carriers.

 

“The HD voice capability enables a global help desk to publicize one ‘local’ number for all English-speaking customers anywhere in the world, another for all Spanish-speaking customers, and so on,” Ullens said. “The clarity of high definition tremendously helps callers to these numbers, who often are listening in their second or third languages or listening to non-native speakers.”

 

Moreover, a call-conferencing provider could use iNum for an internationally local access number. The new feature adds the benefit of in-the-room sound quality to iNum’s location neutrality and cost savings on international calls.