Globally there were around 1 billion Mobile VOIP users worldwide in 2017 and this is expected to grow to 9.87% by 2021. A lot of businesses have already chosen VOIP over other types of Phone system beating even PSTN by 36% to 24%.
Two reasons why small businesses are not satisfied with their Phone system is Voice Quality and cost. To add to this, according to research by GCTV you have only 8 to 10 second to grab the attention of a phone call and if during this small time period the call quality is bad you are sure to lose a prospect customer. Nobody likes to shout “Hello Hello” continuously.
Those dark days are gone and there have been huge improvements in the quality.
“ Nothing is perfect in this world” as there are still some instances of poor call quality. However, the good news is that the reasons behind these issues are easy to track down and fix.
This article will walk you through some of the main factors that can affect the call quality and what can be done to fix them.
Bandwidth
The internet connection is an important factor that affects the voice quality in VOIP conversations. Bandwidth is a key factor that affects call quality. A broadband connection will work perfectly right if it is not shared with too many other communication equipment. Dependency on bandwidth is one of the main drawbacks of VOIP technology.
Equipment
Cheap equipment is usually made up of poor quality. It is therefore recommended to have as much information as possible on ATA, router before you invest your money. Read reviews about this equipment, discuss it on forums, you can also talk to the people who have used this equipment in the past and get a fair review. It is possible that you might choose the world’s best hardware but it is of no use if it doesn’t satisfy your needs.
If you are about to purchase an ATA/ Router soon, you need to think of the following factors:
- Supported Compression Technology
- A mechanism that will help in reducing the echo- Echo cancellation
- Security support and Firewall.
Weather conditions
Sometimes you will feel that the voice gets distorted by static electricity generated due to natural calamities such as thunderstorms, heavy rains, floods, strong winds, strong impulses, etc. This static will not cause any disturbance when you are surfing the internet or downloading a file, but when you are listening to a voice you are surely going to complain.
It’s quite easy to get rid of this problem, all you need to do is unplug your hardware and plug it back again.
The effect of weather condition on your connection is something which is not in your control. In some cases, you can get some short-term solution, but in the majority of cases, it is in the hands of the service provider to come up with a solution. Changing the cables can solve the problem but this can be costly.
The place where your hardware is located
VOIP equipment interferes with each other which causes noise and other problems. Say for example if your ATA router is placed very closely with your broadband router you might feel that there are voice quality problems. This is usually caused by electrical Feedback, therefore it is advisable to keep them away from each other to get rid of Echoes and dropped calls.
Audio Codec
Every system that is equipped with a VoIP phone system uses an audio codec to compress the audio signals at one end and to decompress them at the other end. Majority of them are standardized, but some vendors still prefer a proprietary codec. Some of the very famous proprietary codecs are G.723, G.729a, etc.
The audio Codecs introduces a digitizing delay, as each algorithm would require a certain amount of data to be buffered before it gets processed. If the codec is complex, more CPU resources would be required and this affects the voice quality.
Some codecs are good, some are bad. Long story short each codec is designed for a specific use and if it is used for a need other than what it is meant for, the call quality will suffer.
Packet Loss
No matter how hard you try, some of the packets are always lost in the IP network. It may be due to reasons such as excessive collisions, overloaded links, etc. Usually, packet losses up to 5% are acceptable and may not deteriorate the voice quality. But a packet loss of more than 5% will lower the voice quality and will induce noticeable delays.
Network parameters
One important parameter that determines the quality of voice communication is the overall network load. More network load, more collisions, lesser is the quality of transmission.
One thing that can be used to increase the efficiency of voice packets is to
Give higher priority to the voice packets traveling through the network than the data packets.
Besides these other parameters such as Call set-up time, Call Success Ratio, and Call-Setup rate are some of the other factors that affect the VOIP call quality. Type of protocol used such as SIP or H.323 may also affect the performance of various processes.
Echo
IP telephony involves the conversion of IP media into analog/digital and Vice versa. As a result of this, there is an echo induced at different positions in the network. They are of two types Hybrid echo and acoustic echo. It is usually difficult to monitor the echoes but certain vendors provide the echo-cancellation facility.
Bottom Line…!!
Digital disruption has revolutionized each and every aspect of communication and voice is no exception. Several VOIP services are now available on the cloud. Amongst these services, one of the most reliable and the most efficient is the cloud based virtual phone system. A good Virtual phone system provider like CallHippo will first make sure that you don’t face any of the problems mentioned above and if any such circumstances come up they will make sure that it doesn’t become an ongoing problem once it is fixed. With all these factors capable of significantly affecting the VoIP calls quality over your inbound and outbound routes, asking the right question to the VoIP providers is a subject of analysis and balance across all the stages of a call’s path through the networks. They engage and listen to customer problems and work as hard as possible to deliver the highest possible performance. When it comes to quality each and every factor counts. Getting a high-quality call is not something that happens by chance and CallHippo works very hard to give the best services to its customer.