fullrate

Full rate, in telecommunications and information theory, refers to the standard or maximum data rate assigned to a channel or service without additional rate reduction, compression, or multiplexing. The term is used to distinguish the baseline capacity of a link from reduced-rate or multi-plexed alternatives.

In GSM networks, Full Rate (FR) denotes the original speech coding standard that delivers approximately 13 kilobits per second for a single voice channel. FR is typically contrasted with Half Rate (HR), which combines two voice calls into one time slot to save bandwidth, and with enhanced codecs such as Enhanced Full Rate (EFR) and other adaptive codecs used in later generations. These variants aim to improve speech quality or spectral efficiency while maintaining or altering the effective data rate.

Beyond voice in GSM, full-rate concepts appear in other digital communication contexts to describe uncompressed or maximum-supported payload rates on a given link, before any higher-layer multiplexing or error-control schemes are applied. The exact numeric value of “full rate” can vary by system, technology, and era, but it generally represents the baseline capacity from which efficiencies are derived.

See also: half rate, enhanced full rate, adaptive multi-rate, voice codecs, data rate, channel capacity.