Despite concerns of a slowdown in enterprise voice over-IP spending, Germany-based VoIP provider snom is banking on the North American enterprise market embracing the next-generation of the technology. The company today introduced KlarVOICE, a wideband VoIP handset for its 3xx series VoIP phone portfolio. Targeted primarily at the cost-sensitive small and medium business (SMB) sector, the technology uses more than twice the spectrum for voice frequencies as standard VoIP phones.

The KlarVOICE handsets support G.722 codec and have an effective pass-band of 50 to 7,000 Hz as opposed to the 200-3300 Hz in standard narrowband VoIP phones. Mike Storella, director of business development for snom, said that the wideband technology can allow for new features as well as give a warmer, richer voice quality and improve the audio of phone calls, something that has remained flat in the past 75 years of the telephone business.

“In 2007, it was all about getting security done and call quality, and now it’s new features,” Storella said. “We’re always adding new features. The other thing cool about VoIP phones made by us is you can go to our web site and download new firmware to get the latest and greatest features. That is different from the old telephone world, where essentially it was a dumb handset. It might have had some flash memory on it, but no one really upgraded the phone to do new and different things.”

The VoIP provider has expanded its distribution in the US in the last few years. While it has a dominant European presence, Cisco, Linksys and Avaya still represent the majority of IP communications in North America. Storella said that snom distributes to any size company, but the SMB market has been the hottest space for the company as they overcome fear of security issues and quality degradation.

“Because of our long-term relationship with the open-source environment, the SMB space seems to be really hot and expanding,” Storella said. “We do a lot with them. I do think the SMB space is clearly under pressure to lower costs in their businesses. That is their first and foremost goal – to go look at what they are spending on telephone service and telephone equipment.”

Especially in the SMB market, cost savings are going to be the number-one driver in what telephony technology an enterprise will adopt, according to Keith Nissen, principal analyst at In-Stat. He agreed that the change to VoIP will only come as it offers a significant financial benefit. Right now, the economics for switching to any VoIP technology simply aren’t there, he said. The transition is only occurring as businesses come to a natural point in equipment replacement.