Cable VoIP Sounds Better Than Some Landlines

A. G. Bell writes "A recent study that looked at the quality of phone calls came up with some surprising results. Ars Technica reports that while 'traditional' VoIP call quality lagged behind landlines, service from cable ISPs was much better because of their use of PacketCable: 'VoIP from the cable companies actually surpassed the traditional phone network in reliability, meaning that the service was more often available and connected calls without dropping them. Cable providers also led the way in audio quality; the top firm in Keynote's study actually turned in an MOS of 4.24, above most real phone networks.'"

Comments

Surprising? No.

[6031769]

Given the bandwidth of a cable (or any other broadband) connection I don't see why this should be surprising. Since a standard phone line needs to be upgraded for ADSL anyway, clearly the throughput with VoIP should be better than POTS.

Re:Surprising? No.

[ackthpt]

Given the bandwidth of a cable (or any other broadband) connection I don't see why this should be surprising. Since a standard phone line needs to be upgraded for ADSL anyway, clearly the throughput with VoIP should be better than POTS.

The analog bandwidth of a landline is sufficient for decent quality anyway. The most limiting factor is the poor microphone and speaker used in most of these. I've had some great phone calls over VoIP where I couldn't understand what the blazes the other party was saying and it was mostly chalked up to them using some awful little wireless job which picks up interference from everywhere and vox clipping.

VoIP on Cable I fully expect to come in 5.1 audio at some point, why the heck not? You've got the bandwidth and then some. The question: does anyone ever really need this will be buried in the relentless pursuit of More Toys.

"Hello, this is sylvia"
"mrs. blechman, this is the gas board. you are 3 months behind in your gas payments when can we expect a payment?"
(ulp) "HELLO? HELLO? Is there anyone there? HELLO?"

Re:Surprising? No.

[Brickwall]

and the respect for phone companies is misplaced -- your phone is reliable because they're mandated by legislation to achieve a very low downtime rate).

Well, I worked in the telecom industry for 20 years, and I can tell you that Nortel, for one, engineers its PBX's for exactly the same reliability as its CO switches, and there's no legislation forcing them to do that. (BTW, exactly what piece of legislation subjects Bell Canada to limits on downtime? I've never heard of it.) It's a matter of pride among telecom gear makers that their stuff works all the time.

Of course, there's an economic incentive to make it so. If the network goes down, there's no toll revenue to be had. And service requires expensive people and gear to provide. So you build stuff that works most of the time, degrades gracefully in the event of failure, and then you put lots of redundancy in the network. It makes good business sense.

depends a lot on the phone

[mytrip]

I have a Cisco 7960 at home and a polycom 601 at work and they both toast landlines. We sell voip systems based on asterisk and a lot of it depends on whether the phone is full duplex, half duplex, if you use a switch or a hub, your isp. My isp is time warner and is very good. My same phone on my moms comcast would suck at 6pm when it is congested. VOIP on a pri definitely rules though if you have a full duplex phone. even on speakerphone.

some pure...

[Morphine007]

...anecdotal evidence for you:

I'm using a Cogeco* VoIP phone, and it's awesome. It's clear as a bell, whereas the Bell POTS connection that I had previously had enough static on the line that it made it tremendously hard to hear the conversation. For the longest time I thought it was the handset...You can imagine my surprise when I switched over, used the same handset, and found that all that static had disappeared.

* - I don't work for Cogeco and frankly couldn't care less if they survived or went belly-up tomorrow... but they're a cable company and it fits with TFA...

Vonage over Comcast HSI

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a real bitter subject for me. I (try to) use Vonage over Comcast's internet service, but I get daily service outages, dropped calls and overall poor sound quality. I do not blame Vonage for any of these problem. Whenever I call Comcrap to complain about their internet service they always ask what I use the internet for: surfing, e-mail, etc. When I reply with Vonage, they always try to sell me their VoIP and I always say, "it doesn't matter what VoIP provider I use, it's still your internet connection that's the problem." I'm starting to realize now that maybe it DOES matter what VoIP provider I use. Comcast Digital Voice = packets get through, Vonage = packets get dropped?

Agreed - very good service

[us7892]

I just got VoIP two months ago through my "local" cable company, and the voice quality has been excellent. And, the bill was even better! So far, so good.

An interesting side not if you're a Verizon phone and DSL customer. Simply mention the fact that you're dropping DSL for cable and they first try and scare you by saying you are on a shared network and will certainly be targeted by intruders. If you can put up with their speach, then they'll offer at least one free month, and in my case, $10 less per month to stay with their DSL.

Then, finally, the second call to cancel phone service they give a speech about unreliable 911 service and dropped calls with VoIP. If you can patiently wait for that speech to conclude, they'll offer another discount to keep you as a land-line customer. In my case, it was $10 again! No rebates on long-distance though...

Bottom line, call up your phone company now, and say you want to cancel DSL and/or land-line service. You will certainly get a free month and a monthly discount.

Re:Agreed - very good service

[NMerriam]

Indeed, this works both ways. There was a local SBC promotion with Yahoo! for DSL at $19.99/month, and if you had cable you could call up and go through the motions to cancel, tell them you were leaving for that deal, and they'd match it. Pretty big discount considering they charged $45/month for Cable internet for those of us who don't have Cable TV as well.

Of course, I live in an old building with horrible wiring and could never get DSL, so it was all a bluff.

Re:Except when the power goes out.

[AK Marc]

I'm still going to keep my POTS line. It's my security blanket.

Well, when my power goes out, I'm still on the Internet for hours. Perhaps if you were worried about calls when the power is out, you could spend $100 for a UPS. My cordless phones work great in a power outage. I bought one with a battery in the base. My Internet works great in a power outage. I have a UPS. The runtime is good too, as I have just the minimum data equipment plugged into the UPS and I have a laptop to work off of. I have hours and hours of talk time and Internet usage in a power outage. Oh, and if all those fail, I pull out a cell phone. The only reason a power outage will hurt is if you don't expect it (and you obviously expect it and know the consequences) or you don't think that your uptime is worth the $100. Or, if you are just using it as an excuse to complain about technology you don't like.

Re:I guess it depends where you do the study

[king-manic]

I lived in 3 different towns in NJ and one in CA and I think the landline has gone down like once in 25+ years. I've never had a landline to landline call dropped, ever. I didn't even think that was possible.

I have had the cable drop off dozens of times though as have most people I know. I'd rely on Verizon for VOIP in a second but I would trust Cablevision to deliver my email. If what they are saying is actually true on a national scale then I'm shocked.

Landlines in most areas are regulated. If their dropped calls/ 1000 rise above a certain level they get fines. Most areas are about 9-15 / 1000 before fines come into play. POTS are rarely fined.

Re:Cable internet monopoly put to use...

[The Vulture]

PacketCable calls use special flows that have guaranteed latency-and-jitter limits specially designed for voice. Only the cable company can create and use those flows.

Precisely the point that everybody forgets. (I've done software development on DOCSIS cable modems and a CMTS - although I didn't do any PacketCable work, I've had to read some of the specs and have also configured test systems for use with it.)

The cable company has a huge advantage over DSL when it comes to VoIP, because Vonage et al. share the same logical traffic flow - they just change the priority of the packets within that single stream. With the PacketCable capable modem, you have multiple streams, and the head-end equipment is made aware of this, thus being able to prioritize the streams themselves. It's a kind of super QoS.

Because of this, I feel that cable is the technically superior platform, except that the cable operators just don't want to put any thought, planning or money into the infrastructure. The charges that CableLabs levies for testing don't help either, although they have come down a fair amount since the time I was doing DOCSIS work.

All that said, I'm still waiting for the day when they finally get it right - a single modem/set-top box that can handle a PacketCable stream, an HDTV QAM stream, and a data stream, with PacketCable as top priority, HDTV as second and then the data. From what I've been hearing, companies that are trying to do "triple-play" are finding that they have to install multiple boxes (as many as one for each purpose sometimes), and they don't necessarily work well together.

-- Joe

So the real story here is...

[NoMaster]

... "VoIP with bandwidth to spare, controlled low latency, and QoS is sometimes almost as good as a dedicated voice network"?

Gee, any telco engineer or high-level tech could have told you that...

Disclaimer: I've been one. From a purely technical POV, VoIP is something of a con. It's attractive to end-users because it offers a chance to break free from the telcos. It's attractive to telcos because it allows them to homogenise their networks onto a single IP-based platform. Technically, though, it's a shitload of kludges to shoehorn something into a transmission platform that was never designed for the requirements of that kind of traffic. Underneath those kludges it's unreliable, inconsistent, and doesn't scale terribly well - though, because it's based on commodity technology, it's relatively cheap to implement/expand.