Louisville, Colorado, December 28, 2010—Eleven industry suppliers took part in a recent interoperability testing event at CableLabs® that focused on progress being made around wideband High-Definition Voice (HD Voice). CableLabs also announced it has signed a collaboration agreement with the Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT™) Forum.

CableLabs has adopted the DECT Cordless Advanced Technology—internet and quality (CAT‑iq™) specifications as part of its PacketCable™ HD Voice initiative. "This collaboration agreement enables cable operators, CableLabs and the DECT Forum to work together to ensure that all HD Voice capable DECT handsets certified worldwide will operate with cable gateways," said Jean-François Mulé, Vice President, IP Technologies and Services at CableLabs.

"Our working together will help drive the adoption of DECT HD Voice worldwide leveraging CableLabs' premier R&D lab facility known for fostering multi-vendor interoperability," said Mike Rude, chairman of the DECT Forum US Working Group. During the interop event held December 6–10 at CableLabs, the companies exhibited a high level of interoperability between handsets and base stations. A number of wideband high definition voice calls were successfully made using different components from various suppliers. HD voice technology doubles the transmitted bandwidth of one's voice by capturing twice the speech information of a standard phone call.

The interop specifically addressed DECT CAT-iq 2.0 technology. This is a technology designed to enhance quality of digital voice increasing engagement for both consumer and business voice. Participating suppliers were Binatone, BroadSoft, CCT, DSP Group, Lantiq, Panasonic, RTX, Samsung, SMC Networks, Technicolor and VTech.

"This interop was great to observe because it was one of the best attended interops held for DECT HD Voice, and it showed tremendous gains being made with this technology," said Jeff Lewis, Senior Director, Technology Product Development, Broadband Devices, Comcast. "The vendors demonstrated product interoperability between DECT chipsets, base stations, handsets and SIP-based applications of different suppliers including PacketCable™ MTA devices for European and American frequency plans. This level of interoperability is one of the keys to unlock HD Voice delivery. It opens the way for retail availability of new and innovative handsets for HD voice and SMS texting that work on cable right out of the box."

Suppliers have implemented a number of CAT-iq features that are important to cable, said Daniel Rice, Vice President, Access Network Technology at CableLabs. "This event represents a significant milestone in proving the technology choices for enabling HD Voice for consumers in North America. We successfully tested registration, paging, Caller ID display, Call Waiting notifications, barge-in, CODEC negotiation and multi-line applications in numerous vendor combinations, among other items," Rice added.

About CableLabs: Cable Television Laboratories (www.cablelabs.com) was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. A non-profit research and development consortium, CableLabs delivers innovations that enable cable operators to be the providers of choice in their markets. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains additional web sites at www.cablenet.org and www.ebif.tv.

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