SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 5, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 8x8, Inc. (Nasdaq:EGHT - News), provider of innovative communications solutions to small businesses, today announced it 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.

8x8'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 (PSTN), 8x8'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.

"The advantages of HD voice go well beyond a simply richer sounding conversation," said 8x8 Chairman and CEO Bryan Martin. "It's amazing how much more productive enterprise calling can be when participants hear the full fidelity of the voice on the other end of the line, just as if they were having a face to face discussion. Instead of walking down the hall to visit with a colleague, subscribers can now enjoy the same audio experience with the push of a button on the 8x8 speakerphone. With the advent of compelling IP enabled features like HD voice, the shortfalls of traditional PSTN phone service become even more prominent and businesses will find yet another reason, beyond cost savings, to transition to VoIP communication services."

Industry journalist Doug Mohney wrote in a story titled HD Communications: The Third Wave, published earlier this year in HD Voice News, "High-quality voice with wideband codecs is about five times better than the stock PSTN call. Big business already recognizes that high-quality voice is a big winner today for conference calls and international calls. Using HD, people understand what is being said better because there's more audio information to use and less need to 'process' to fill in the blanks with a foreign speaker or sorting out who is who on a conference call."

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.

8x8's HD voice is a standard feature offered free of charge to all business subscribers. All new 8x8 subscribers after January 4, 2010 will automatically receive the HD voice service with their subscription. Existing IP phone subscribers can contact 8x8's customer service at 1-888-898-8733 to receive the upgraded HD voice service.

8x8 Vice President of Business Development Huw Rees will discuss the company's HD voice technology and strategy in greater detail during the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show HD Voice Summit being held on Wednesday, January 6 from 1 - 5:30 p.m. in Las Vegas.