The European Telecommunication Standards Institute's SMG 1 recently finalised the requirements for an envisaged enhanced full rate (EFR) codec to supplement the current GSM TCH-FS codec [1]. In this paper, we assess the performance of two modern speech codecs vis-a-vis the published performance requirements for the envisaged EFR. We conclude that a significant improvement in speech quality both under clear and degraded channel conditions is achievable within the framework of the SMG performance requirements.