Howler: bandwidth shortage a real restriction on emerging market progress
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Bandwidth, or rather the lack of it, greatly affects the ability for emerging markets to communicate with the world at large. The G.711 codec, as adopted by all incumbent wireline telcos in developed markets, requires at least 64kb/s of bandwidth per channel. G.711 requires minimal resources due to its relatively uncompressed content but is very sensitive to network problems (especially prevalent on IP networks).
The cost of carrying this bandwidth burden on international trunks is heavy for telcos in emerging markets, where the rapid increase of voice traffic to international destinations (due to their burgeoning market activity) requires a corresponding and immediate increase in investment by the telco to meet peak demands (otherwise those at the forefront of their booming economy will be met by the dreaded "fast busy" congestion tone or even worse, miss an incoming call due to insufficient network capacity).
While the Plain Old Telephone Network (POTS) was homogenous in its use of codecs and required little in the way of transcoding, the modern telecoms network is anything but. The modern PSTN must interconnect with a multitude of competing technologies at the network edge, and whilst G.711 will be around for a long time as the de-facto standard where bandwidth is in abundance, many providers (eg, mobile network operators, VoIP-Wi-Fi plays and Internet-based SIP providers) simply do not have this luxury. Where these codecs differ between networks, transcoding must be performed in order for the parties to make and receive calls between themselves.
Restrictive bandwidth constraints have long been a recurring problem in the telecoms industry, notably for providers passing calls over mobile and, more recently, IP networks and the Internet. Low bit-rate codecs (eg, AMR-NB, CDMA, G.729 and iLBC) are typically used to compress the audio into a fraction of its original size at the expense of increased computing resources required at each end of the connection. Switches have historically concentrated these resources onto specialised Digital Signal Processor (DSP) chips. Unfortunately even modern DSP chips are only able to transcode a small number of channels, and thus are required in droves to meet the peak call demands of modern telecoms networks, driving up engineering costs, power and cooling requirements. In order for emerging markets to efficiently communicate with the world at large, a more concentrated approach is required.
While Developing Telecoms can not endorse any product or service, Howler Technologies claims to have harnessed the multi-core technology found in IBM's Cell Broadband Engine chip to create a new breed of IP Media Gateway. Howler's Caraya - its software-based packet processing platform - is said by the company to be capable of performing signal processing and transcoding on thousands of channels simultaneously. Howler believes that its technology "will drive forward the adoption of more efficient, low bit-rate codecs such as AMR-NB and G.729, and is able to offer its solutions at price points that were previously unattainable using DSP-based hardware." As a result Howler's "media gateway will enable emerging markets with limited funds to connect more people at lower costs across international boundaries helping drive the economic growth for which they strive."
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