Patent ID: 7463901

Claim:
A method for providing communications interoperability between multiple wireless user communication devices in a communications system that have different speech processing configurations, comprising: encoding in a primary speech codec of a first wireless user communication device a first speech message using a first speech encoding format; sending the encoded speech to a second wireless user communications device that includes a primary speech codec supporting a second speech encoding format; receiving from the second wireless user communications device a second speech message encoded using the second speech encoding format; and decoding the second speech message using a secondary speech decoder supporting decoding of the second speech encoding format, wherein the first wireless user communication device does not support speech encoding using the second speech encoding format, wherein the first wireless user communication device and the second wireless user communication device are engaged in a Push-to-talk (PTT) communication where only one way communication is permitted and an operator of one of the wireless user communication devices must press a push-to-talk button on the wireless user communication device to transmit information to the other wireless user communication device, and wherein the PTT communication is a PTT over Cellular (PoC) communication and the first and second wireless user communication devices are first and second PoC clients, respectively.