New Study Finds VOIP is Getting Better

Proudrooster writes "Keynote Systems Inc. made 154,000 VOIP calls during the months of May and June. In total they tested six VOIP providers and seven ISPs. Their conclusion was that VOIP isn't quite as robust as the public phone network due to dropped calls, lower audio quality, and latency (audio delay), but it is still pretty good. The worst VOIP provider had an availability of 94.8% (which isn't bad) and overall the reviewers were pleasantly surprised with the VOIP test results. Vonage ranked best for "most reliable" with 99.4% uptime, AT&T CallVantage ranked best for "audio clarity"." Personally I think 94.8% is pretty awful. I don't think 99.4% is very good either. But there is no doubt that audio quality is getting better. I only maintain my land line now for my HD Tivo to dial out from.

Comments

Take heed

[bigwavejas]

The worst VOIP provider had an availability of 94.8% (which isn't bad)

I disagree entirely! When someone's life may depend on a call going through (911) I would say anything below 99.99 (repeating) is unacceptable.

In addition...
There is another problem with using VOIP. When the internet goes down your VOIP phone may go with it. We use VOIP phones at work and I recall a situation last year where a hacker brought our internet connection to its knees (hence no VOIP phones) and everyone was running around like a chicken with their head cut off trying to figure out how to make calls. Our solution was to use cell phones for back-up, but I couldn't help but point out if we had regular phones we would have avoided the problem entirely.

99.4% sucks

[Gothmolly]

my land line works 100% of the time. That's not 2 nines, or even 5 nines. 100% of the time, through blizzard after blizzard here in the Northeast US, through rainstorms, through anything. You know what's nice about that? 911.
99.4% = 4 HOURS a month, your phone doesn't work. That's absurdly crappy. At that reliability level, it should be a free product.

Baby Bells

[ffejie]

The Baby Bells keep their uptime greater than 5 nines typically.

99.999%

Show me VoIP that does 99.99% and then I'll consider switching.

QOS, 911, regulation

[davidwr]

With regular phone service, you get:

Independent network, assuming cable not DSL
911
Quality of service: availability, reliability, signal/noise, time-to-repair, etc.
Regulation on quality and pricing
Works when the power is out
Not as cheap as VoIP, unless you are poor and get subsidized service

With VoIP you get:
Network dependent on underlying internet
Limited if any 911
Best-effort signal/noise
Good-enough(?)-but-unregulated quality of service
Little or no regulation beyond 911
Works when the power is out as long as your batteries last.
Cheap.
Generally no subsidized service, but most people on welfare aren't getting high-speed internet.

The best part: You get to choose.

And this is news?

[Szaman2]

How is this news? I would expect VOIP to get better. If it was getting worse - that would be newsworthy I guess...

What next? Study shows that CPU's are getting faster? Study shows that Linux is getting easier to install and maintain? I would say this is the natural progress. Things improve over time - that's just how it works.

Or Put Another Way...

[linuxwrangler]

94.8% is....

20 full days per year down time or

1.2 hours down EVERY DAY!

And to make matters worse, failures tend to occur more often when things are heavily loaded - ie. not in the wee hours but rather when people actually want to use the phone.

Obviously someone has a different definition of "not bad" than I do.

I remember when M$ proudly claimed 99.9% uptime for NT. To me that sounded terrible. Over 3.5 FULL 24 HOUR DAYS of downtime every year. Horrid!