TEO - Ready to go into Orbit!

HenryFord - 29 Dec'04 - 21:23 - 2311 of 2359

“This mysterious funder obviously has faith in abundance so I'll raise a glass when we get another good RNS.”

“Faith in abundance” vs “proven commercial superiority”? let everyone decide for themselves…..

Everyone agrees what the problem is:

“Until now, achieving great voice quality and robust noise subtraction in mobile communications has been an elusive goal. Even the most current mobile phones, offering advanced Internet and networking capabilities, still rely on 30-year-old audio processing techniques.Limitations of today’s technologies
Modern mobile phones are limited in the way they analyze and modify speech and audio signals.
Current problems include:

1. Limited adaptability. Many audio technologies are unable to automatically enhance incoming
and outgoing sound quality in accordance with your surroundings.

2.Inaccurate speech detection. Existing technology is unable to consistently and accurately differentiate your speech from other sounds in your environment.

3. Disruptive background noise. Most audio technologies have difficulty subtracting animated,
everyday noises such as other voices, music, or loudspeakers.

4. Awkward booms. In many cases, good speech quality can only be achieved by placing a boom in front of the user’s mouth.” (Jawbone website)

To which I would also add:
5. No protection from acoustic shocks from folks shouting on the line

6. No protection from electronic shrieks like tones, whistles, fax tones on the line

7. No removal of far end and near end echos produced as the sound goes via the telco fixed networks

8. No adjustment of incoming signal strength to the level of the current noise in the environment (teo SLE)

Having had a chance now to look at every attempt to solve this problem from clarity, srs, plantronics, jabra etc etc it does appear very possible that the Jawbone may very well be one of the most sophisticated attempts yet to solve the first four limitations above that they have identified….vs all the other attempts….to date..

What jawbone themselves say:
“The Jawbone mobile headset is different. It is the only such device that offers exclusive, military-grade audio processing technology with the power to adapt – and continuously improve audio quality – based on what it knows about your environment.”

Texas instruments believe the performance is “unmatched”:
Jawbone uses TI´s C5405 device to process multiple audio channels, performing signal identification, adaptive noise subtraction, adaptive audio enhancement, echo cancellation and a variety of other real-time tasks to effectively filter out and transmit only clear voice from within a noisy environment. The smaller size, low power consumption and extended functionality enabled by the DSP allowed Aliph designers to build a headset with unmatched performance in a package compact enough to surpass consumer expectations.

So they can have happily for me have the title of the world’s most advanced headset that addresses 4 out of the 8 major issues with mobile communications. It just so happens that teo;s claim in the edison report to being “the first digital noise reduction headset” is to me based on the fact that it addresses all 8 of the above issues and not just 4 of them….

In the very short time jawbone has been on the market it seems to me for a tiny start up to have generated remarkable intereset a search on google confirms this “Results 1 - 10 of about 7,220 for jawbone headset.

So I am now intrigued to watch and wait for the reviews of the new teo software driven telco headset coming out shortly in the new year as when the cat is out of bag…..I think we will be in for a most interesting time….

At the end of day the world is not really that bothered about technology specs, nice websites, good sales staff, but a genuine ground breaking product that delivers the best sound out there…in the globe..the fact that the teo telco product for Q1 2005 is arguably the first digital design win out there…for "quality business telco headsets"..suggests that this argument has already been won….but I know many will need to wait for the press reviews and follow up wins from other customers….before as you say having any greater degree of confidence....

But for me to get into a position from starting from scratch in less than 12 months where you can even make any sort of claim at all to a best in class position against firms that have been in the business in some cases for 10-12 years is nothing short of remarkable....and to me defines the great success that was 2004 for teo.....so who takes the credit for this....I say well done to all of them but also well done to Amir and the n-teq sales folks.....

Have a great new year in 2005 to all……and as ever these comments are to raise some debate for existing holders…..and are not investment advice …and imvho etc