DECT SoC: The Component that Detached the Phone from the Wall
Product: Key Component in Cordless Home Phones Company: DSP Group (DSPG) Start of Development: 1999
DSPG was founded in 1987 as a manufacturer of chipsets for communications and telecommunications applications. The company initially ran two development centers, in the US and in Israel, but in 1999, all company operations were transferred to Israel.
Towards the end of the millennium, the company saw the field of cordless telephony as having great potential for growth.
Consequently, they decided to employ the advanced signal processing technology, the exclusive voice processing algorithms, and the radio technology the company had created, in order to develop a component for short-range cordless communication.
The vision and the objective were to enable phone calls with high sound quality while callers could move around the house or office without needing to stay close to the phone jack. The company needed RF (Radio Frequency) technology in order to advance its development. To this end, they assembled a team of professionals that worked out of the Israeli branch of the American company LSI Logic, and the RF technology was acquired by the American company AMD.
The product, which was named DECT SoC (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications System-on-Chip) had one-of-akind features providing unprecedented quality. It was put on the market in the early 2000s and conquered the target audience: home and office communications manufacturers worldwide.
Within just a few years, with sales amounting to over 200 million components a year, DECT components were incorporated in most cordless phones sold across the globe. Sales spiked from 50 million dollars in 1999 to 290 million dollars in 2008.
The development of the component continued over the years, and included innovations such as eliminating the need for an attached analog answering machine, enabling voice commands with the use of advanced algorithms for voice recognition, conference call capabilities, integrated contact lists, and other added technologies.
The use of cordless home phones has decreased in recent years with the emergence of cellphones. Nevertheless, DECT components are also an integral part of state-of-theart products such as smart speakers offering man-machine communication, and smart home solutions, which offer detection and alert services, energy consumption management, support systems for the elderly, and connections to emergency services.
