Become a Protocol Pro
When most people think about VoIP protocols, they typically only think of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). SIP is one of the preeminent standards in the world of VoIP, but it is by no means the whole story. This post will cover the wide (and interesting) world of VoIP protocols. Read more…
Decoding VoIP Codecs
Anyone new to VoIP has probably heard the term “codecs” bandied about and wondered what all the fuss was over.
Codecs (so named because of their coding/decoding function) are used to convert an analog telephony signal into an encoded digital version that can be compressed into packets and sent over an IP network (like the Internet). Codecs lie at the very heart of how VoIP works, so having a general understanding of what they are and which ones to use is important when deploying a VoIP system. Read more…
Why Phones Matter
Telephones are the most ubiquitous communications device on the planet, and they do not suffer from the uneven distribution rates of other consumer communications products.
Simply stated, phones matter in providing government services because almost all citizens have them (landline telephone penetration rates are somewhere close to 95 percent nationally, and cell phone penetration rates are at about 85 percent). Moreover, almost all citizens that have them understand how to use them, and have some experience navigating IVR or touch tone menu systems. There is no learning curve for a citizen to ascend before using a telephone to interact with their government. Read more…
Recording WAV Files for IVR Applications
If you are building (or managing) an IVR system, you often have a need to record audio files to be used in place of Text-to-Speech (TTS) content. One of the easiest ways of recording audio file for IVR systems (and for lots of other uses) is to use the powerful open source Audacity toolkit. This short tutorial will demonstrate how to record a WAV file for use by alertworks outbound campaign manager and the Voxeo Prophecy platform.
Open Audacity, and access the default sample rate in the lower left corner. Change the rate from the default (44 kHZ) to a rate more appropriate for analog telephony — 8 kHZ. Read more…
The State of Standards
The most significant change in the last 10 years to the way that voice applications are built has been the development of open standards. These open standards have fundamentally altered the paradigm for building telephone applications, to better align with the way that standard web applications have traditionally been built.
The most import set of standards for building phone applications and IVR systems is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). There are, however, other standards maintained outside the W3C as well – for example the Media Resource Control Protocol (MRCP) standard is maintained by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The W3C provides a nice summary of the status of voice application standards, and provides regular updates on standards activity via Twitter.
Telephone applications that use open standards embrace the latest technologies for building such applications, and can be considered to be “future proofed.” As these standards continue to be refined and improved, applications built using them will benefit from improved efficiency, additional features and lower maintenance cost.
While many platforms support these open standards, not all voice application platforms are created equally. Tele-Works builds voice applications specifically engineered to run on the Voxeo Prophecy platform – one of the most (if not the most) standards compliant voice platforms on the market. Our applications take full advantage of the benefits of open telephony applications standards, and the robust nature and unique features of the Prophecy platform.
It will be exciting to see what the next ten years brings in terms of new voice application standards development. One thing is for sure, voice applications and services built today using open standards are well positioned to reap the benefits.
