Texas Instruments Incorporated and Viseon Inc. today announced the joint development of Viseon’s Digital Home Telephone, the VisiFone(TM). The VisiFone was specifically designed to enhance the consumer Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) offerings from a variety of carriers both in the United States and abroad. This unique phone will enable consumers everywhere to make digital IP-based multimedia calls with anyone in the world.
“The phones inside all U.S. homes today have virtually gone unchanged since the introduction to touch-tone dialing in 1963. They were never designed with high-speed broadband connections in mind and are incapable of realizing the full potential that VoIP feature-rich digital services provide consumers,” said Viseon president and CEO, John Harris. “VisiFone is a revolutionary digital telephone that will finally allow the home phone to join the digital world and to enable the features of VoIP on a fully digital device.”
With the VisiFone, consumers will hear CD quality digital wide-band audio sound versus the monaural AM radio sound that they have become accustomed to. They will also be able to make high quality two-way video calls and even manage VoIP service features and preferences directly on their VisiFone.
Viseon’s broadband Digital Home Telephone incorporates the latest technologies from TI’s VoIP and digital media groups, including TI’s newest IP phone system-on-a-chip, the TNETV1050, featuring enhanced digital voice quality, conferencing, security and interoperability for next-generation IP phone applications; and its DSP-based TMS320DM64x digital media processor, offering high quality, multi-channel video performance, complete software programmability and reduced system costs through the integration of key audio visual connectivity peripherals. The combination of TI’s advanced components with its communications technologies in one integrated device enables consumers to enjoy true broadband voice and video applications through innovative new products such as the VisiFone.
“The development of Viseon’s new VisiFone is an excellent real-world example of how TI has successfully merged two complementary technologies to provide a single point solution for a customer,” said Bill Simmelink, general manager of TI’s VoIP business. “The combination of our integrated system-on-a-chip for VoIP and our best-in-class digital streaming media processor provides unparalleled performance in video and voice communications. This truly highlights TI’s commitment to deliver end-to-end software and silicon solutions for voice, video and data over broadband.”
“The weakest link in the present generation VoIP service is the need to convert the digital voice packets into an analog signal to make it backward compatible with existing home telephones,” says Vamsi Sistla, Director of Broadband Research, ABI Research. “A high quality digital phone not only eliminates that drawback but also paves the way for new features and functionality for VoIP subscribers.”
Compatible with most carriers’ VoIP networks, Viseon’s VisiFone features the highest quality video encoding/decoding system on the market today and is customized to display each carrier’s feature and preference controls. Initially, the VisiFone will be offered through Vonage at www.vonage.com and is expected to be in over 7,000 retail/e-tail locations nationwide.
