Listen Up! VoIP Quality – Sucks Sometimes
I used to record Podcasts over a VOIP corporate network but about every fourth word would be unintelligible. This was probably due more to the ineffective IT staffs management of the bandwidth demands on the network as VOIP wasn't the only application that was slow. Anyway, here is some factual feedback via Computerworld.
"The quality of service is bad and getting worse. And IT is using the wrong tools to measure the aural performance of voice-over-IP calls. After looking at 18 months of data gathered on Brix Networks Inc.'s www.testyourvoip.com Web site, Kaynam Hedayat, the Chelmsford, Mass.-based company's chief technology officer, found that end users rated one out of five VoIP calls "unsatisfactory" using the telecommunications industry's standard mean opinion score (MOS) metric. Hedayat admits to being surprised, having expected a 90% to 95% satisfaction rate among callers.
Worse still, he says, the data indicates that things are getting, well, worse. "Voice quality is actually decreasing on the Internet," Hedayat says, speculating that increasing data traffic, particularly video streams, is contributing to the problem."
Read more about Poor Quality VOIP
Technology | Steve Rucinski | 27 July 2006 |
