With all the emphasis put on value-added features and the bells and whistles associated with business VoIP and unified communications (UC) solutions, it’s easy to overlook basic issues of quality control. These types of offerings promise a lot – from a great ROI to productivity benefits from happier workers with lots of options.
When it comes down to it, VoIP solutions are only as good as the voice quality they offer, and that quality needs to remain consistent to be valuable. We recently discussed the phenomenon of audio fatigue (please link to RevoLabs article) and how detrimental it can be to a business if not kept in check. Thankfully, service providers have a broad range of monitoring tools at their disposal that can help pinpoint problems and make corrections before workers, customers and business reputations are negatively impacted by poor voice quality.
Jitter is one of the most common issues that can severely impact the quality of VoIP calls. Network backups, congestion and configuration errors can all cause delays when it comes to sending packetized voice. And for a VoIP call, it’s critical that packets are sent in a specific order to maintain voice quality, otherwise jitter will result. A jitter buffer can certainly help combat this issue, but businesses and their service providers should also look at their networks to ensure they are capable of handling VoIP traffic.
In fact, monitoring network traffic is one of the key ways to ensure VoIP calls maintain clarity and high quality. This can be achieved by minimizing traffic during important calls, halting streaming services and other high bandwidth apps, and refraining from big data file transfers and other bandwidth intensive tasks. Alternately, businesses can research increasing their bandwidth to ensure they have enough network space to accommodate VoIP calls.
A VoIP router is another way to ensure VoIP calls are prioritized over other types of network traffic. This type of router should also support the session initiation protocol (SIP), which reliably handles routing of voice packets for VoIP calls. Virtual LAN (VLAN) support is also useful for grouping and dispersing data using areas where latency is low. The frequency of the phones and handsets being used is also critical to ensuring high call quality. Businesses experiencing interference during VoIP calls may want to research a 5.8-GHz phone if they are using a 2.4-GHz model or vice versa.
Finally, investing in a good quality headset can go a long way toward ensuring high quality levels are maintained during VoIP calls. USB and other types of hard-wired headsets typically offer higher quality levels than wireless or Bluetooth models, and are a better fit for VoIP calls.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi