Data released by a voice-quality-testing company indicated that one in five calls made using voice over Internet protocol is nothing to phone home about.
Data collected by Brix Networks -- which runs voice testing portal TestYourVoIP.com (testyourvoip.com) -- indicated that almost 20% of Internet telephone test calls produced unacceptable call quality in the past 18 months.
The data were based on tests consumers have made of VoIP services using the free portal, which was launched in 2004.
The site evaluates call quality using the telco industry’s standard Mean Opinion Score, which rates audio quality on a scale from one to five, with one being bad and five being excellent. During that time, 81% of test calls achieved an acceptable MOS score of 3.6 or higher.
This despite the fact that the consumer VoIP market now claims 20 million subscribers, noted Kaynam Hedayat, Brix’s vice president of engineering and chief technology officer.
"For long-term sustainability, providers of Internet phone services will need to concentrate on the root causes of call-quality degradation, including late packet discards, lost packets and round-trip voice latency,” Hedayat added.
In related news, Brix’s test software is now available as a Google Gadget (desktop.google.com/plugins) for download on the online search giant’s portal.
