February 15, 2005

VoiceAge announces increasing momentum of AMR usage across diverse applications

CANNES, February 15’th. VoiceAge Corporation today announced that the use of the standards-based Adaptive Multi-Rate speech codec (AMR) narrowband speech compression technology is seeing a rapid increase in new application areas beyond cellular telephony.

During the past 3GSM World Congress VoiceAge announced that it had been appointed as the License Administrator on behalf of Nokia, Ericsson and VoiceAge itself for the AMR-NB patent pool for non-wireless applications. Since that time more than a dozen companies have obtained AMR-NB licenses and VoiceAge is in negotiations with many additional companies who are interested in obtaining AMR licenses for emerging innovative applications. The primary application segments driving the growing momentum for AMR-NB include:

AMR is the best performing and most widely deployed narrowband (200-3400 Hz) compression technology in the world today. This widespread deployment together with its high quality and robustness make AMR the codec of choice and the baseline for narrowband multimedia services.

In rigorous comparative testing by standardization bodies, AMR out-performed all competitors and exceeded all requirements for robustness to packet loss, bit errors, and background noise, also demonstrating consistent performance across multiple languages, including English (US and UK), French, German, Italian, Mandarin, and Spanish. AMR supports dynamic adaptation to network conditions, using lower bit rates during network congestion or degradation while preserving audio quality.

AMR operates at very low bit rates from 4.75 to 12.2 kbps and provides toll quality speech starting at 7.4 kbps, with near toll quality at lower rates and greater robustness and better reproduction of non-speech sounds at higher rates.

“Using the AMR-NB standard, content development tools and multimedia messaging applications ensure that they will be able to effectively reach over one and a half billion cell phone users around the world since this mandatory speech codec is already integrated onto these mobile terminals,” said Laurent Amar, President of VoiceAge Corp.

“As the popularity of multimedia communication over the wireline and wireless Internet grows and as specialized devices, such as audio books or Wi-Fi VoIP terminals are added, there will be increasing demand for bandwidth-efficient high-quality speech and audio compression. VoiceAge is well positioned to fill this need with our standards-proven AMR, AMR-WB and AMR-WB+ coding solutions,” continued Laurent Amar.

Designed to allow transcoder-free connectivity between GSM, US-TDMA and PDC networks, AMR was standardized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in 1999 and adopted by the 3GPP as the mandatory codec for narrowband telephony in 3G WCDMA networks. It is also the mandatory codec for 3G H.324M (26.111) terminals supporting video telephony and the default codec for Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) as defined by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA).

To experience VoiceAge codec solutions first hand, visit our listening demo at 3GSM World Congress 2005, Cannes, 14-17 February 2005, Hall: 4 Booth: L12.

About VoiceAge®

VoiceAge Corporation is the forerunner in the development and dissemination of speech and audio compression technologies and solutions at the convergence of wireless, 2.5G, 3G, Wi-Fi, and Internet protocols. VoiceAge codec solutions are based on our flagship ACELP® patented technology platform that delivers unsurpassed quality experienced daily by more than one and a half billion mobile phone users and well over 500 million PC users worldwide. VoiceAge is the License Administrator on behalf of Nokia, Ericsson and VoiceAge itself for the Extended AMR-WB (AMR-WB+) patent pool and for the AMR-NB patent pool. In addition, VoiceAge plays a key role in setting industry standards as an active member of several standards bodies including ITU-T, ETSI/3GPP, and 3GPP2.

For further information about VoiceAge Corporation, please visit the Company's website at www.voiceage.com

Contact
VoiceAge Corporation:
Baris Demir, Director of Marketing, VoiceAge Corporation, Montreal, Canada
baris.demir@voiceage.com +1.514.737.4940 ext. 233

750 Lucerne Road, Suite 250
Montreal, Quebec,
Canada H3R 2H6

VoiceAge and ACELP are registered trademarks of VoiceAge Corporation in Canada and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.