SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Just one week after announcing a startup venture to deploy wideband audio conferencing technology, WYDE Voice – backed by Free Conferencing Corp. founder and CEO David Erickson – has already been recognized as the “Best in Show.” At the VON conference this week, the new company won a VON Innovators award for its VM1000 and VM3000 real-time conferencing appliances that support 16-bit, 16 kHz voice quality – twice the capacity of today’s conferencing technology. Associate News Editor Sarah Reedy sat down with Erickson to find out why the market is in need of high-def audio conferencing and why the time is now.

On why the startup is entering the conferencing market: Two years ago we attended the VON conference and realized that VoIP needs a differentiator – it needs to be cheaper or easier to use, and it needs to be of higher quality than what you can get on the PSTN. Here we are two years later launching the company and very happy at that.

On why strong audio trumps weak video: It is very pioneering, I think, how many tabletop devices can talk to our servers. It is very new all the way around. I felt someone needed to get out and start driving this, because high-definition voice is truly better than standard voice. I would rather be on an HD voice conference than a poor videoconference. You can hear a lot more in a person’s voice in real-time communications, whereas video is kind of distracting.

On WYDE’s potential market: We are a little ahead of the curve, but we have a posture where we can go out and sell all day long to those who don’t have it. A lot of partnering opportunities for us at this stage – there are a lot of people looking to evangelize this market that we can look to for partnerships, and serious potential customer opportunities.

On generating customer demand: I think there is a lot that can be done, but who is going to want it right now? The customers aren’t standing in line. The customers don’t understand the value of it. Since the demand isn’t high, a lot of people are trying to stick to their business plans and make money the way they set out to do it, in VoIP, but I think this is the perfect time for people to get together and get the users to come on board.