In an effort to spur the growth of HD VoIP, Broadcom announced today that it was offering its BroadVoice suite of voice codecs royalty-free and sans any licensing fees.

Broadcom is releasing its wideband and narrowband codes, in both floating-point and fixed-point C code, as open source software under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), version 2.1, which is published by the Free Software Foundation.

By getting rid of the royalties and licensing fees, Broadcom said it was driving a cost-effective transition to HD VoIP applications “by enhancing the quality of voice transmissions, enabling a higher-quality audio experience.”

"We are seeing an increase in the number of requests for HD voice support from service providers [that] want to differentiate their telephony services from their competition,” said Dan Marotta, senior vice president and general manager of Broadcom's Broadband Communications Group . “By offering high-performance and highly efficient BroadVoice voice codecs royalty-free, we are enabling manufacturers and service providers to transition to HD VoIP as a means to significantly improve their customers' audio experience."