Texas Instruments, which has its chips in pretty much every piece of VoIP equipment there is, is making a big push for voice quality. It's licensed a high-quality high-bandwidth codec from the Fraunhofer Institute--the folks who gave the world the MP3, MP4, and AAC audio standards. The new MPEG-4 AAC-LD super-wideband codec can sample at up to 48KHz, which is slightly better than CD quality, and transmit the audio at between 48 and 64 kbps. That requires a lot of computing power and a lot of bandwidth. TI says its DSPs can handle the processing if you've got the bandwidth, and can open the door to a range of voice-powered applications.

For more about TI's wideband codecs:
- read this release [1] from Texas Instruments