Patent ID: 7328027

Claim:
A method for a first mobile switching center associated with a first access point in a wireless wide area network to negotiate the use of vocoders in a call, the method comprising: receiving a request to establish the call between a first wireless device served by the first access point and a second wireless device served by a second access point; determining that the first wireless device supports first and second vocoders, wherein the first vocoder uses less bandwidth than the second vocoder; determining that the second wireless device supports the second vocoder but not the first vocoder; determining a current load of a coverage area of the first access point; and based on the current load, selectively choosing between using the first and second vocoders for call traffic between the first access point and the first wireless device, wherein selectively choosing between using the first and second vocoders comprises using the first vocoder if the current load is above a preset threshold.