ITU Approves Polycom Siren14

SLOUGH, U.K. -- Polycom , Inc. (NASDAQ: PLCM), the worlds leading provider of unified collaborative communications solutions, today announced that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has approved Polycoms Siren14 technology as a new 14 kHz super-wideband audio coding standard, and the approval now goes to "last call" as ITU-T Recommendation G.722.1 Annex C. The technology, which is being offered with royalty-free licensing terms, provides near-CD quality audio for better clarity and less listener fatigue with applications like video conferencing. Siren14 requires dramatically less computing power and bandwidth than alternative wideband audio technologies like MPEG4 AAC-LD, eACC+ and AMR-WB+.

"Polycom is a strong proponent of industry standards and continues to serve as a pioneer in developing and promoting standards for interactive video communications," said Hans Schwarz, chief technology officer at Polycom.

"Siren14 is a mature super-wideband audio technology that has been proven on Polycom video conferencing systems for more than five years and is ideal for real-time teleconferencing and Internet streaming applications. We are pleased the ITU has recognised its unrivaled performance and are offering royalty-free licensing terms to ensure its widespread use across manufacturers and accessibility to customers."

In addition to driving the technology behind the new G.722.1 Annex C, Polycom was also instrumental in developing many other of todays video conferencing standards, including the previous wideband audio standard G.722.1 (Siren 7), the video coding standard H.264 (also known as MPEG4 Part 10), the H.239 standard for video and data sharing (also known as people+Content) and video extensions to the IETFs Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Siren14 is the second audio coding technology from Polycom that has been approved as a standard, following Siren 7 (G.722.1), which is currently licensed by companies including: Aethra, Marconi, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Radvision, VCON and others.

Polycom Inc.