VoIP Enhancements Coming to iPhone

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Global IP Solutions has announced that it has adapted its highly successful VoiceEngine Mobile technology (used in Skype and other Internet-based VoIP services) for Apple’s second-generation iPhone.

The VoiceEngine technology will help developers of iPhone applications easily add high-quality, real-time VoIP communications to a variety of application types.

“The VoiceEngine takes a lot of the hard-to-manage components of VoIP processing—the transmission and unpacking and wraps it up in one easy-to-implement package for our customers,” Dovid Coplon, GIPS’ director of product management told Enterprise VoIPplanet.

“What we’re providing our customers is a series of libraries and a high-level API to access those libraries and integrate it into their application,” Coplon went on. “They’ll provide binary executable on the Apple Store for customers to download. We’re really enablement technology, so we’re providing these capabilities to our customers.”

Coplon pointed out that the VoiceEngine will have access to two GIPS-developed codecs: the wideband iSAC and the narrowband, Internet-optimized iLBC codec, which is actually embedded in the iPhone firmware.

Although it is not yet at liberty to disclose specific customer agreements, GIPS already has a well-defined picture of what kinds of applications developers will be voice-enabling.

“We’ve already been contacted by a number of customers, and there’s a few uses we can perceive,” Coplon said. “One use for sure will be instant messaging applications—adding the ability to have voice chat in addition to text chat, as it’s currently available. Additionally, we perceive the ability for gaming applications and for enhancements to social networking sites.”

Mats Perjons, GIPS senior director of product management interjected: “Don’t forget it’s also enterprise.” Perjons pointed out that as unified communications applications using Wi-Fi connections continue to gain a foothold in large organizations, a voice-and-IM-enabled client will be a valuable tool. “We want to be part of that play as well,” Perjons said.

Coplon agreed: “What we enable is the ability of our customers to focus on what they do best. As Mats mentioned, that could be enterprise applications, it could be instant messaging applications, it could be social networking, or gaming. They understand their customers, and they want to enhance the experience within that particular application with voice communication, so we can handle all of that for them and make the job of that addition much easier,” he concluded.