Abstract: An apparatus and method are described providing a combination full/half rate service type comprising a half rate speech codec and a full rate channel codec having a front end arranged for communication with the half rate speech codec wherein the front end includes a bit mapping re-ordering module.

Abstract: A method of testing a speech transcoder is provided for testing a speech transcoder including at least a speech decoder module connected to a PCM format conversion module where the method of testing includes inputting a standard input vector into an input of the decoder module and outputting a reference vector from the PCM format conversion module.In an alternate embodiment, the method of testing a speech transcoder having a first PCM format conversion module connected to a speech coder module includes inputting a reference vector into the first PCM format conversion module and outputting a new vector from the speech coder that is equivalent to standard speech coder output or equivalent to a vector that was generated by inputting standard speech coder input into a combination of two PCM conversion modules and a reference speech coder.

Abstract: A transcoder is described for performing transcoding operations, that is to say coding and decoding operations on voice data arranged over a plurality of voice data channels. It comprises a first interface (10) for inputting and outputting coded voice data, a second interface (11) for inputting and outputting decoded voice data; at least one transcoder processor (101) for performing transcoding operations on voice data arranged over at least two voice data channels; and an input/output processor (100) coupled to the first and second interfaces and the at least one transcoder processor for controlling the flow of data between the first and second interfaces and the at least one transcoder processor. The input/output processors controls the at least one transcoder processor to perform transcoding operations on a selected channel at a given time. The invention is particularly applicable to transcoding between CEPT standard voice data and GSM standard voice data.