A basic idea of the invention is to ascertain information on the course of the bit rate switching during an active speech phase. According to the invention, during the speech phase, information on the percentage proportion of broadband active speech frames in comparison to narrowband active speech frames is compiled on the part of the decoder. A high percentage proportion of broadband active speech frames indicates that a broadband use is preferred on the part of the codec and therefore a need exists for synthesizing noise information in broadband form during a DTX phase.