LTE stands for Long Term Evolution, the upcoming mobile phone internet standard also known as 4G. With significantly faster speeds than WiMax LTE is rightly called 4G. With theoretical download speeds of 100 Mbit LTE is also much faster than the current 3G Networks. Driven by ever increasing data traffic LTE is fast evolving to become the new standard for the mobile Internet. Especially in rural areas were ADSL is not available or just at low speeds LTE is hailed to be the solution. With the rise of subscriptions however the traffic speeds will decrease as more and more users have to share bandwidth. End of 2010 Ericson was showcasing LTE in Thailand. The NTC (National Telecommunications Commission) expressed its willingness to use 2.3GHz-2.5GHz bands. Meanwhile AVM is showing its first Fritz!Box LTE at the CEBIT 2011 in Hanover.

In this post I will write a little about common VoIP codecs used to conduct calls via Internet. In Thailand G.729 is still popular because of its advantage to eat up relative small bandwidth. However with faster broadband speeds the bandwidth is not really a problem nowadays anymore. Quality wise G.7.11 offers ISDN caller quality and is certainly the most used VoIP codec nowadays. More recently the G.7.22 was developed and offers High Definition (HD Telephony) All Fritz!Box models support HD telephony today. In combination with HD capable phones like the Fritz!Fon  MT-D and MT-F callers can indulge into a new level of call quality with a much broader voice spectrum.

 

Codec	Bandwidth/kbps	Comments
G.711	64	Delivers precise speech transmission. Very low processor requirements. Needs at least 128 kbps for two-way.
G.722	48/56/64	Adapts to varying compressions and bandwidth is conserved with network congestion.
G.726	16/24/32/40	An improved version of G.721 and G.723 (different from G.723.1)
G.729	8	Excellent bandwidth utilization. Error tolerant. License required.
GSM	13	High compression ratio. Free and available in many hardware and software platforms. Same encoding is used in GSM cell phones (improved versions are often used nowadays).
iLBC	15	Robust to packet loss. Free
Speex	2.15 / 44	Minimizes bandwidth usage by using variable bit rate.

AVM just released an English language firmware for Fritz!Fon MT-D & MT-F. To update the phone you need to change the menu language at your Fritz!Box to German first. Then press the Menu bottom on the Phone than go to Einstellungen and Firmware update. The phone will update to version 01.02.27.  Change the language of Fritz!Box back to English. Take your Fritz!Fon and choose Menu, Einstellungen, Firmware update and  you can update to version 01.02.28. The phone will restart and you have an English language menu.