VoIP Call Quality Issues

When you transition to VoIP, be prepared to deal with typical service problems. These are natural conditions. Normally, you shouldn't experience any service disruption or distortions even when you have these. However, if you are with a so-so network or VoIP service provider, you will feel the effects of VoIP call quality issues.

• Know about problems before they affect your day-to-day operations
• Stay on top of how your VoIP service performs
• Enjoy the full benefits of VoIP

Typical VoIP call quality issues should not affect your VoIP performance. For instance, latency, which is the delay transport of data/voice packets, is normal. Even traditional telecommunications experience latency. But if it goes beyond 150ms one way, you will definitely experience voice quality distortions.

For certain circumstances, you can address VoIP call quality issues yourself. Here are some tips:

Slow connection: This is one of the worst things to have when you want to use VoIP. Digital communications rely on your network connections. Fast connections mean that you can have unhindered conversations. When you suffer from slow connections, the best thing to do is upgrade your service. This means either getting a better service project with the same or a different service provider.

Bad equipment: It could be that you experience VoIP call quality issues and the problem is on your end. You may have the wrong router for prioritizing VoIP calls. Or, you may have outdated equipment that result in voice quality distortion. The best solution here is to upgrade to a better router wherein you'd be able to configure the QoS. With the router's QoS, you can prioritize VoIP. This lessens the bandwidth allotment for other applications, particularly the bandwidth-heavy applications ones, like gaming applications.

Delays: All forms of telecommunications experience delays or latency. The crucial issue is the length of delay. There's tolerable delay and there's delay that ruins your overall user experience. With VoIP, the two-way delay should only add up to 250ms. A rate above means that there is disruption every so often. The delays may even be causing dropped packets and gaps in the conversation.

There are several ways of dealing with delays, depending on the cause of delays. If the cause is on your end – your equipment may be out of date or defective, or your network and VoIP connections may be bad – these are situations for which you can implement fixes.

Cut wires and incorrectly setup equipment can be fixed by changing cable wires, or upgrading to a newer model.

Sometimes, too, a simple way of fixing delays is to set yourself up closer to your router. Connecting via wi-fi will cause delays and if its too much, all you need to do is go closer.

A surefire way of correcting delays caused by your system is by prioritizing voice packets. You do this by configuring your QoS. Most modern routers now come with QoS access where you can set how much priority is given to different applications. To prioritize VoIP, you just have to prioritize voice applications while reducing priority of bandwidth heavy applications, such as gaming applications.

To stay on top of how your VoIP performs, set up an account with VoIP Spear, a VoIP monitoring service that offers free trial accounts and personal, residential and business options.