Skype’s SILK codec available royalty free to third parties

I wrote earlier about the need for royalty-free wideband codecs, and about a conversation with Jonathan Christensen about SILK, Skype’s new super-wideband codec.

This week Jonathan announced that Skype is releasing an SDK to let third parties integrate SILK with their products, and distribute it royalty free. This is very good news. It comes on top of Skype’s announcement that Nokia is putting the Skype client on some of its high end phones. If the Nokia deal includes SILK, and the platform exposes SILK to third party applications on the phones, SILK will quickly become the most widely used wideband codec for SIP as well as the most widely used wideband codec, period. That is, if the Nokia deal stands.

Polycom has been leading the wideband codec charge on deskphones, and it already co-brands a phone with Skype. It would make sense for Polycom to add SILK to its entire line of IP phones.

For network applications like voice, Metcalfe’s Law is like gravity. Skype has over 400 million users. If the royalty-free license has no catches, the wideband codec debate is history, at least until LTE brings AMR-WB to mass-market cell phones.

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