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Is Voice Quality and VoIP an oxymoron?  It very much can be, and for business applications it is imperative that your VoIP Service Provider has a solution to address voice quality.

Sharing internet bandwidth for voice and data is a good thing, allowing for the convergence of communication features and the economization of connectivity.  Sharing bandwidth without quality of service protocols, however, is not wise.  This can lead to intermittent silent pauses, which is just one of the voice quality concerns with VoIP.  Delay, due to latency or jitter, or voice echo, due to inferior or lack of noise cancellation equipment, are additional challenges with VoIP.

Some VoIP service providers merely drop ship your pre-configured phones with the instructions to plug them onto your network and all will be fine.  They may have sized your bandwidth correctly and applied compression to your voice packets as their recommended solution.  This is not enough!  An evaluation of the path to their host site is important to ensure latency is within acceptable limits.  Also, your VoIP provider needs to provide some level of traffic management at the router level or an edge device to your network.  This “QoS” solution keeps the voice traffic prioritized and without interruption by data traffic.

Why is this important? Imagine your customer placing an order with you and you hear “I need one       thousand         units by             Thursday.”  When you deliver the thousand units, your customer calls you and indicates that although he appreciated the early delivery of the thousand units, he was looking for “one hundred thousand jumbo units by next Thursday.” 

Don’t let this happen to you.  Make sure your VoIP provider is as focused on voice quality as they may be on features and benefits.  Check out sipVine’s VoIP QoS solution as an example of a provider who places a premium on voice quality for all of the business digital phone service customers.

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at  sipVine , a provider of a variety of  digital phone solutions  and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments. 

 

Consumers have long searched for ways to reduce their household expenditures.  Many are ditching their land line phones in favor of their cell phones or have turned to an inexpensive Voice over IP provider. Such movement has been great for the competitive marketplace, but has also built a perception that by going to a VoIP application you are sacrificing the quality of your phone call. 

For most businesses, going wireless only or converting to a VoIP provider who doesn’t deploy a quality of service technology are simply not good alternatives.  Despite the fact that wireless has introduced us to “dropped calls” and certain VoIP carriers have left us underwhelmed by “voice in a cave” quality, it doesn’t mean that this is an acceptable standard in the business marketplace.  You and your customers deserve to have the highest class of a communication experience. 

There are several root causes of a poor voice experience with some VoIP carriers, from inadequate bandwidth and latency, to lack of the proper technology applied.  These can be avoided by careful screening and selection of your VoIP provider.  Here are some questions for you to ask as you evaluate making the change:

1.     Does the provider evaluate your current bandwidth utilization and your expected call volume?

2.     Does the provider deliver a router or bridge device preprogrammed with a quality of service (VoIP QoS) software?

3.     Does the provider conduct your service installation on-site?

4.     Does the provider configure your phones to how you do business? 

The VoIP QoS software is a must for these applications.  It simply prioritizes the movement of voice packets over the internet connection, keeping the data packets flowing, but not interrupting the voice transmission.  The other questions above will give you a feeling as to how the company conducts business – preprogrammed drop ship or customized to their customers’ needs. 

There are many benefits for business to move to a VoIP application, from cost savings to advanced communication features for your business.  Choosing the right provider with an eye on quality will increase your satisfaction and effective utilization of the service. 

For more detail on this topic, please download our whitepaper -- Voice Quality: The Ultimate Differentiator in VoIP Providers.

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About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments.