Abstract: A telephone having a method and apparatus for increasing the intelligibility of the loudspeaker output and for echo cancellation. The telephone includes an intelligibility booster for processing a speech input signal to generate an intelligibility-enhanced signal. The intelligibility booster includes a reverberation signal path for generating a reverberation signal, a direct signal path for generating an attenuated direct signal corresponding to the input signal, and an adder for combining the reverberation signal and direct signal to generate the intelligibility-enhanced signal. The reverberation signal path includes an intelligibility-information emphasizer followed by a reverberation unit. In the preferred embodiment, the intelligibility information emphasizer is a high pass filter and/or compressor that generates an intelligibility-dense signal to generate the reverberation signal.