Voice compression for remote service applications

Remote service for machines is becoming a crucial technique for companies with worldwide market presence. Maintenance, customer support and after-sales service are considered to have a high value for customer satisfaction and thus for keeping and increasing market shares. The paper deals with the presentation of ICT systems for enabling improved cooperation between manufacturer and customer. The existing personal relation between all people involved is necessary for appropriate discussion and quick problem solution. The approach is to integrate bidirectional speech transmission into an existing remote maintenance system based on TCP/IP protocol on low-bitrate channels (e.g. GSM). An overview of existing voice compression techniques and boundary conditions for application are given.