What Is G.729?

Q: How much worse is G.729 than G.711

Audibly different in normal conversation but still intelligible. Not suitable for music on hold or background music.

Q: Does G.729 require a license fee

Previously licensed via Sipro Lab Telecom, but the patent expired in 2017. Now royalty-free.

Q: Is G.729 really better than G.711 over WAN

Yes, saving roughly 8x bandwidth. 50 concurrent calls use about 4 Mbps with G.711 vs 1.5 Mbps with G.729.

2026-05-07 2 min readSIPPER Team

G.729 compresses voice down to just 8 Kbps per direction, the lowest of the standard codecs. Ideal for bandwidth-limited WAN links.

Definition

G.729, standardized by ITU-T in 1996, uses CS-ACELP to compress 8 KHz narrowband audio to 8 Kbps. Acceptable toll quality, but lower than G.711 / G.722.

Usage

Used on inter-branch WAN, MPLS branches, hotel sites with restricted voice bandwidth, or SIP Trunk plans priced by bandwidth.

Related Concepts

G.729a (Annex A) is a lower-complexity variant requiring less CPU than baseline G.729.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much worse is G.729 than G.711

Does G.729 require a license fee

Is G.729 really better than G.711 over WAN

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