January 6, 2010 (FinancialWire) — 8×8, Inc. (NASDAQ: EGHT), provider of innovative communications solutions to small businesses, has upgraded its VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) network to support an industry standard wideband audio codec to enable HD (High Definition) calling for business phone service subscribers.

8×8’s new HD business voice feature delivers significantly enhanced audio fidelity to users of its 6753i, 6755i and 6757i IP (Internet Protocol) phones. Subscribers using these telephones can now enjoy a more “in-person” conversation and richer calling experience as if all parties on a call were standing in the same room. While Voice over IP services have long been able to mimic the same voice quality as the traditional public switched telephone network, 8×8’s new HD voice service now greatly surpasses any audio capabilities of the legacy PSTN network. This new service allows all calls within a small business or distributed enterprise to benefit from the efficiencies accompanying in-person conversations, with easier to recognize voices, better understanding of accented speakers and greater voice clarity in the presence of background noise.

Traditional telephony is based on sampling the sound stream 8,000 times a second using 8-bit coding, constraining the reproduction of the sound spectrum to the range between 200Hz on the low end to 3.3KHz on the high end. In HD voice, a wideband codec doubles the sampling rate to 16,000 times a second using 14-bit coding and more than doubles the width of the sound spectrum reproduced, from 50Hz to 7KHz. This adds significant depth and nuance to the transmitted sound while not significantly increasing bandwidth utilization.

8×8’s HD voice is a standard feature offered free of charge to all business subscribers. All new 8×8 subscribers after January 4, 2010 will automatically receive the HD voice service with their subscription. Existing IP phone subscribers can contact 8×8’s customer service at 1-888-898-8733 to receive the upgraded HD voice service.

8×8, Inc. (NASDAQ: EGHT) offers voice, video, mobile and web conferencing communications solutions for business and residential customers.

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