Global IP Solutions


Global IP Solutions was a United States-based corporation that developed real-time voice and video processing software for IP networks, before it was acquired by Google in May 2010. The company delivered embedded solutions that enabled real-time communications capabilities for video and Voice over IP. GIPS was perhaps best known for developing the narrowband iLBC and wideband iSAC speech codecs.
GIPS software was generally delivered as “engines” that packaged together voice and video processing components into optimized frameworks for smoother integration and better performance. GIPS’ customers are primarily service providers, application developers, and manufacturers of IP phones, gateways or voice and video conferencing systems.

History

The company was founded in July 1999 in Stockholm, Sweden by signal processing experts Roar Hagen and Bastiaan Kleijn, Espen Fjogstad and Ivar T. Hognestad. The founders recognized that, at the time, most VoIP solutions were using existing technology developed for circuit switched networks, and were therefore not properly suited to handle the delay, jitter and packet loss presented by IP networks. It was with that premise in mind that the company began to develop and market technology specifically designed to mitigate the inherent challenges of VoIP.
In May 2010, Google bought GIPS for $68.2 million. In June 2011, Google released WebRTC, a proposed standard for pluginless peer-to-peer audiovisual communication between browsers, with GIPS technology.