In a speech communication network in which a transmitter (1) transmits speech signals via a network (4) to a receiver (8), it can happen that more traffic is offered to the network (4) than it can handle. In order to reduce the network load, at least one node (24) comprises bitrate reduction means to delete some of the prediction parameters representing the speech signal. It can also be the case that a receiver comprises a speech decoder having not the computational power available for decoding the encoded speech signal. In said case, the speech decoder is arranged for using only a part of the prediction parameters available. This results in a lower complexity of the synthesis filter (60).