Report on VOIP Quality

Report on VOIP Quality
Keynote Systems has studied VOIP quality, with a focus on the reliability and the sound quality of VOIP calls. Sound quality is important as a recent Harris Interactive survey found that 52% of respondents named call quality as a key reason not to use VOIP. Part of sound quality is audio delay on VOIP calls, and it could be up to twice that of a traditional phone call. Keynote found that that the delay problem has not improved in the past six months. In terms of reliability or connection rate, the surveyed operators reached an overall connection rate of 99.1%, not yet exactly the “five nines” of traditional telephony, but improving from the 97% rate six months before. The conclusion of the survey is:

• Most VOIP providers still offer services with less sound quality than both wireline and cellular service
• Only three VOIP service providers on 11 tested, Vonage, Time Warner and Verizon, offer pretty good service to be called “toll quality”.
• Five of the 11 providers tested are still far from that standard.