Loading ...By Sharla Sikes
One of VoIP’s drawbacks is the sometimes poor sound quality. Echoes, “blips” or moments where the sound cuts out and background scratchiness are just a few of the complaints.
With my own Vonage service, I’ve noticed an echo only a few times, and not recently. But I don’t log many hours on the phone while at home. If you depend on VoIP communications for your business, poor voice quality may be more than just a minor annoyance.
Remedying static and echoes is a problem. Most of the time, calling the service provider will prompt them to check for errors and dropped packets. If those check out fine, there’s not much else they can do.
Psytechnics, a spinoff of British Telecom, offers a more in-depth solution.
The company aims to measure both packet performance and caller satisfaction. Its focus on Quality of Experience, http://www.psytechnics.com/page.php?id=qoeandmos§ion=solutions meshes psychology and technology.
“IP QoS tools have grown up looking at performance of the IP network, treating VoIP like data,” says Mike Hollier, CTO of Psytechnics. “They don’t look into the real time data streams between endpoints to measure problems within the voice call. Echo, noise, speech levels, distortion, line level settings, and other problems reduce the quality of the experience even when the IP network shows all green lights.”
While IP issues are occasionally the cause of poor call quality, more often it is something else. Endpoints and voice-specific details often need attention. Configuration may also be a culprit, or handset performance.
Problems from those sources won’t show up in IP measurements. Psytechnics’ deep packet inspection shows the waveform, allowing the user to see any noise and distortion.
Psytechnics offers Experience Manager software that can be as useful to troubleshoot as it may be during development of IP networks. It’s not a small-business solution, with prices out of a smaller company’s budget; but for larger companies, it makes sense and provides the ability to monitor and guarantee user experience.
Related Content
Hmmm…good insight.
I also experience echoes on my Onesuite suiteadvantage account previously but when I change ISP the echoes disappear and my Onesuite call quality greatly improved.
Well I wish Voip providers will use Psytechnics for a more in depth solution to voip call quality problems. But I guess only big companies can afford it.