AT&T and Digigram Sign License Agreement for Advanced Audio Technologies

Digigram, a provider of networking solutions for digital audio and remote management, announced that it has signed an agreement with AT&T to license AT&T Labs implementation of the MPEG-2 AAC software. Digigram plans to deploy AT&T Labs' software in its newly designed multichannel professional audio codecs.

"The new products we develop from this agreement with AT&T Labs will fuel the creation and deployment of next-generation audio content for broadband markets," said Digigram president Philippe Girard-Buttoz.

The license allows Digigram to create products incorporating AT&T Labs' highly-optimized AAC software. AAC is the latest technology co-developed by experts in the art and science of audio compression, and standardized as part of the MPEG-2 specification. Seen as the successor to MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3) audio compression technology, AAC provides higher quality audio reproduction, yet it requires approximately 30 percent less data.

Digigram will integrate AT&T Labs' AAC software into its network audio platforms for the professional encoding and management of audio.

"Our licensing agreement with Digigram is an example of how we strategically pair solutions and technology," said Rich Cox, Speech and Image Processing Services vice president, AT&T Labs. "We are confident that Digigram will help raise the standard of next-generation audio services with our AAC technology."

Digigram will offer hardware and software multichannel encoding tools that feature AAC as earlier as the third quarter of 2001.