The purpose of this study is to evaluate the channel capacity necessary to transmit pitch‐period duration values. Using a statistical approach, the average uncertainty (entropy) of a pitch‐period duration value was calculated, taking into account knowledge about the just‐preceding pitch‐period duration value. The data consisted of utterances from 26 speakers (13 male and 13 female); a total of 12 576 pitch‐period duration values was obtained. The results show that, for pitch‐period duration values quantized within 50 μsec, the theoretical channel capacity is 621 bit/sec, for the case where conditioning extends one duration value into the past.