Broadcom is bringing VoIP to the POTS world with the unveiling of the IC maker's BroadVoice VoIP telephony solution, a modular two-line telephony platform that can deliver high-quality voice over standard POTS-based CPE. Potentially, it's a way for DSL and cable service providers to offer their subscribers a "better than" existing telephone service to their customers, while using much less bandwidth than other available solutions.

In addition to the BroadVoice VoIP DSP chip, Broadcom adds software-based voice compression codecs to the mix, which use 50 percent less bandwidth than standard 64 kbps G.711 or other standard telephone solutions. That means operators could offer better quality calls, to more customers, over their current network infrastructure. The codecs themselves are available in two versions: BroadVoice 16 and BroadVoice 32, for support of both standard and enhanced telephony services.