This paper describes a method to achieve high-quality coding of speech signals at 960 bps. The method employs the multiband excitation (MBE) model together with very efficient quantization schemes for coding the spectrum magnitudes and the voiced/unvoiced (V/UV) decisions. The spectrum magnitudes arc coded using a novel vector quantization (VQ) scheme which has both the structural characteristics of multistage VQ and split VQ. The V/UV decisions for pitch harmonics are not transmitted to the decoder but are regenerated from the spectrum information available in the decoder. It was demonstrated that the proposed speech coder is capable of generating speech of good quality.