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.

Re:Take heed

[squiggleslash]

This is why I keep one plugged in at all times, just in case. It's rarely used, but it's a tough - drop it from any reasonable height and it'll still work - phone with an actual bell. (The bell isn't a safety feature, I just thought I'd mention it because it's cool.)

It's remarkable, in my view, how so many people do not do this. I understand the attraction of cordless phones, but these days you can have any number attached to one base station. With four or five outlets in the average home, one attached to the base station, one for your modem or DSL modem, and one other for your answerphone if you have one not integrated with your normal phone, you should have at least one more outlet available, and if you don't, a phone line splitter costs something in the region of $1.06 (yes, you can get them from the Dollar Store, where everything costs $1.06.)

Worse still, I live in Florida. These people suffered a week without power last year, and twice in the space of a month. And how many people have unpowered corded phones? Hmmm? Take a guess.

On a related note, a firefighter soon-to-be-relative happened to mention the whole issue with 911 and VoIP over the weekend to me. I've posted at length my concerns about VoIP and 911, so it was interesting hearing the same perspective from someone (a) who isn't a geek and (b) who actually is close enough to the wall to know how important 911 is.

I was going to get VOIP, but...

[swelke]

Ya' know, I was going to get VOIP, but then I realized that with my dialup internet connection, it might be kind of redundant.

99.44%

[mph]

I don't think 99.4% is very good either.

Come on! That's near Ivory Soap levels of purity!

Loving VOIP here

[SYFer]

Hey rooster: can't you put that TiVo on your home network? I don't have an HD model, but my Series 2 connects via Linksys USB wireless and works great.

Also, although not rated (and maybe that's because it's just a re-branded service from one of those that was--I don't know), my Speakeasy VOIP works pretty well. Voice quality is far superior to my old telco service, but there are indeed occasional minor dropouts or fizzle-outs. Since I also have a mobile phone, that gives me adequate redundancy in the event my service goes down, so I've been pleased overall.

With broadband and VOIP now coming from from Speakeasy, I can't tell you how nice it is NOT to be doing any business whatsoever with my old nemesis, SBC (formerly Pac Bell here in CA). Of course, in time, I may come to view Speakeasy the same way, but not yet. Perhaps I'm in the "rebound" phase after my divorce with SBC, but there's a spring in my telecommunications once step again.

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.

It's good enough for me

[timeOday]

I made the switch to Vonage and disconnected my land line several months ago. Overall, the service is fine by me (actually I've had more trouble getting support than with the phone service itself).

I have noticed an outage or 2, even when my Internet service was up. So don't take the plunge if you can't tolerate a missing dialtone. Personally, I don't think it's a big deal, anymore than when I'm out of the house away from the phone (no I do not have a cellphone).

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.

Re:directivo

[doughrama]

No It's not that stupid.

HD Tivo's are the unit's produced to work with DirecTV's HD. These boxes have their USB Ports disabled. So you suggestion will not work. AFAIK.

If I'm wrong somebody please enlighten me because I would like to put my HD Tivo on the network like I do with my regular series 2 Tivo's.

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!

Not the complete picture.

[raehl]

911 is a free product - so get your free 911 landline, then get VOIP phone service.

Also, 99.4% reliability is perfectly fine for many users - like me. I have a cell phone (actually, two, with different providers) and VOIP. If for some reason my VOIP phone isn't working, I've got my cell phone.

Also, I'd be curious as to how they determined 99.4% reliability. Was that .6% of outage due ONLY to times when vonage was out, or did that also include ANY time the end user was unable to make a call - be it power outage, cable outage, etc.

I've had vonage for months, and the only times it hasn't worked for me were when the power was out or when the cable was out. My cell phone worked fine in either case.

Choices, Choices

[theBraindonor]

For me it has been pretty simple...

Telco:
3-4 weeks a year of tech-support hell. (older urban phone systems)
$60 a month price tag.

Voip:

1-2 dropped phone calls a month--with calls routed to my cell when it's down.
$25.00

My installer even set me up with my DSL on it's own NID, after which I plugged the voip adapter back into the wall socket. Now all my wall phone adapters work just fine.

As to power outages, it can be hard to find the non-wireless phone in the dark. Go ahead, tell me you have a cheap ten dollar phone hooked up. Where is it if the power goes out? Of course, since all my computer equipment is plugged into UPS's, I only worry about prolonged power outages.

Re:Power outages?

[crimethinker]

Combining the two, what if you had an assailant break into your house during a power outage?

My guns are purely mechanical devices, no electricity required.

Next question?

-paul