In our usual coverage of codecs, we tend to focus solely on video compression. This past week, a new cellular voice codec patent pool has been launched by the Via LA organization. The founding members are Dolby, ETRI, Huawei, JVCKenwood, and NTT, contributing their intellectual property (IP), and now the race is on to sign up some licensees. Notably, Huawei is the first licensee. There is a flat fee for the Voice Codec, of $0.60 per unit. In the very unlikely event that every new smartphone sold in 2025 paid this fee, this implies annual revenues of around $720 million for the pool. However, if there are also licensing agreements to sign with the likes of Ericsson and Nokia, this…