Paul Zuber, CEO, Dilithium Networks

To Paul Zuber and Dilithium Networks, it's common sense: If you want to be understood in France, you bring along a French translator, not a German or Greek or Vietnamese one.

But it's not been obvious to the wireless industry for some time. In wireless, the digital equivalent of translation — network protocol transcoding — faces an illogical conundrum. All wireless voice and data apps use different session codes and audio/video protocols — codecs that aren't understood by other types of applications. For instance, voicemail must be translated into the GSM voice codec for a user to listen to messages on a GSM phone.

The wireless industry has relied on tandem transcoding — decoding into another protocol and re-encoding into the codec of the target application. It's about as efficient as taking a Chinese translator to France and seeking out Frenchman who speaks Chinese.

“So what if we agreed on one standard or one code?” asked Zuber, CEO of Dilithium Networks. “Yeah, that's going to happen. Just look at the history of telecom.”

Dilithium has done the next best thing by creating a universal transcoder that acts as a middleman between codecs. The concept is called unicoding. In Dilithium's media gateways, the software eliminates the need for a full decode and encode for every session, cutting down on the memory required over every channel. This increases channel density as much as five times and does away with the 10 to 30 milliseconds of delay required to crunch numbers in tandem transcoding.

Zuber is counting on the efficiency of Dilithium's unicoding technology to land it a spot in every carrier's network. After all, in this age of cost cutting and declining margins, the carriers need all the efficiency they can get.

Zuber draws the line at universal code. Sure, it would be great if the world spoke one language, but it's as unlikely to happen in wireless as it is in society. Besides, if it did happen, how would translators make any money?