Silence suppression

The term silence suppression is used in telephony to describe the process of not transmitting information over the network when one of the parties involved in a telephone call is not speaking, thereby reducing bandwidth usage.

Voice is carried over a digital telephone network by converting the analog signal to a digital signal which is then packetized and sent electronically over the network. The analogue signal is re-created at the receiving end of the network. When one of the parties does not speak, background noise is picked up and sent over the network. This is inefficient as this signal carries no useful information and thus, bandwidth is wasted.