Summary of the Workshop on Wideband Speech Quality in Terminals and Networks:

Assessment and Prediction

The Workshop was held in Mainz on the 8th and 9th June 2004. About 60 participants from various parts of the world were present. The presentations held gave an excellent overview of the current status of research and development in the area of wide band communication systems.

Various presentations indicated, that there is a measurable quality improvement of speech communication when wideband is used compared to narrow band speech communication systems. Also speech intelligibility is improved in wideband systems. It is anticipated that this quality improvement will be widely welcomed by the user community and might be one of the driving factors in VoIP and NGN environments. It is obvious that there is a real need for wideband communication systems especially in the areas of VoIP and 3G.

Subjective and objective assessment methods available or under investigation were discussed. The lack of sophisticated testing and optimization techniques for wideband terminals and wideband network configurations was seen clearly and areas for further work, both in research and development and in standardization were identified.

The workshop made clear, that no tools for planning of wideband speech communication systems are available. First ideas were introduced on how to develop a new wideband transmission planning model based on the e-model.

The outcome of the workshop will help to define the various activities to be undertaken within ETSI in order to generate the standards needed for planning and specifying wideband speech communication systems and to harmonize the existing standards currently available for wideband systems.

In response to the very positive response of the participants to the workshop it is planned to organize a follow up workshop in 2005.

• Power Point summary

• Proposed Follow-up actions