Optimum Lightpath, a Cablevision subsidiary, is introducing an HD voice service for mid-sized and large businesses in its home New York metro area market, the company announced on Thursday. The HD-Voice service may shape up to another arrow in Optimum’s quiver as it seeks to differentiate its integrated IP-based data, voice and multimedia services in the key New York metro area business market space.
Optimum describes HD Voice as a hosted service designed to deliver higher quality voice communications at lower cost. They intend to leverage their hosted voice service, which uses Cisco IP phones and is delivered over Optimum’s fiber network for the new HD Voice feature. “HD Voice demonstrates our commitment to innovation and continuous improvement of our services for smart businesses,” said John Macario, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy and Management for Optimum Lightpath
HD Voice is being promoted by the IP communications industry as offering better quality voice than the PSTN. It’s also referred to as wideband voice. It uses higher bandwidth codecs to improve voice quality. We find it somewhat ironic that VoIP evangelists are now promoting HD Voice, when they initially led the charge for a lower quality voice product. As a result many consumers adapted and accepted lower voice quality via VoIP because of the cost savings. Looks like we’re coming full circle now.
