LG-Ericsson has announced a new IP conference phone, the iPECS ACT-50 Audio Conference terminal, as part of the company's existing line for its iPECS-LIK IP telephony and unified communications product family. The company's press release argues that the phone is "designed to make conference calls even clearer than face-to-face meetings," meaning that some company somewhere will soon say its phone sounds clearer that the voices in your head.

Kidding aside, the ACT-50 sports 16 integrated microphones and four speakers and a 20-foot coverage area to help ensure all conference call participants' voice are heard, whether you are right in front of the phone or on the other end of the call. The technology was developed by Yamaha.

The conference unit also has a built-in audio mixer, multiple microphone modes, adaptive echo cancellation and auto tracking to ensure voice quality. It supports LAN, PSTN and audio in/out interfaces, and also can be daisy-chained for use in larger spaces.

The terminal should be a nice addition to the iPECs-LIK product line that LG-Ericsson only recently began selling in the U.S. market.

For more:
- see the LG-Ericsson release

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Polycom CTO and co-founder Jeff Rodman thinks HD Voice is ready for its moment, despite claims by some that the technology may be suffering from a bad case of the hypes. He said in an interview that half of the frequency spectrum of human voice is cut out by POTS and narrowband IP voice codecs, resulting in the loss of "the edges of words and syllables" in conversations.

Rodman said HD Voice technology has the capacity to restore the part of the conversations that currently are lost. He also said the cost of provisioning desk phones, conference phones and other telephony end points has decreased to the point where Polycom can deploy HD technology in all its devices.

"It went into our top end phones in 2005, and here we are having rolled it into the entire line," Rodman said. "The argument is not on cost anymore. It used to cost a fair number of dollars to make a product wideband capable, but now it's less than a dollar, and that's the reason that Polycom has been able to penetrate our entire product line from top to bottom."

Rodman said he was not really concerned about the threat to Polycom's core handset business potentially posed by mobile VoIP offerings or softclients. He said the company really wants everyone to add HD Voice and has always been a strong supporter of standard protocols, in hopes that HD Voice would gain widespread adoption. Rodman remains adamant about the actual value to enterprise deployments of HD Voice technology.

"Speech itself is wideband, and to the extent that the phone you're using cuts out three fourths of your communication, you're exhausting yourself," Rodman said. "Whether you're talking to your internal people, or talking to your vendors, it's important. Let your competitors call your vendors on an HD phone with wideband capabilities and you continue to contact them with standard telephony. See how they perceive your company."

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ADVERTORIAL: Product debuts and important industry topics such as ecology, lifestyle, HDTV & wireless communications the main features at IFA 2009.
For the second time, and with an even more comprehensive show, the leading brands of the consumer electronics and electrical home appliances industries will be jointly represented on the Berlin Exhibition Grounds at IFA 2009.

More than 600 telco leaders are due to attend East Africa's premier learning and networking event which gets underway on Wednesday.
East Africa Com is a two-day, multi-streamed conference with a 40+ stand networking exhibition.
The conference is the only event to represent the East African region and evolved from the highly successful GSM>3G World Series.

German VoIP phone manufacturer snom announced Monday at VoiceCon that its new VoIP conference speaker phone MeetingPoint will now be available in North America. The phone is designed to deliver wideband audio for the small to medium business markets, and it allows for management of up to four outside participants, 12 SIP extensions, and native connectivity with Microsoft OCS.

Mike Storella, director of business development for snom, said the phone can record meetings with up to 10 participants, and it comes with a USB port to move the conference recording to other devices. He said extension microphones can be added to increase the range and size of conference possible with the MeetingPoint.

The phone will list at $899.00, according to snom company materials. Other features include a XML mini-browser, OpenVPN, and a backlit, graphical LCD display.

For more:
- see the company's MeetingPoint page here 
- see the Fierce slideshow featuring the MeetingPoint here

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VoIP.biz-news is providing extensive coverage from this year's Mobile World Congress being held in Barcelona between 16-19 February.
We will be posting regular updates on product announcements and press conferences from big industry names like Samsung, Toshiba and Microsoft as they happen.

Snom Technology is to unveil the world's first touchscreen VoIP handset at this year's CeBIT tradeshow.
Called the snom 870, the German VoIP telephone maker said the device has an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.

As VoIP increasingly shifts into the mainstream more businesses are going through the process of selecting the best phone systems for their needs.
VoIP.biz-news asked Terry Martin, CEO of Coms PLC, to explain some of the options surrounding business VoIP and offer some basic guidelines for SMEs.