VOIP phone quality

[krysia]

How good are landline calls using IDNet's VOIP service?  We've occasionally had calls from businesses using VOIP, and it's been difficult to hear the person speaking.  I know we'll have to give up our PSTN line when BT switches off the copper service and are wondering about making the move sooner rather than later.  But if the quality of the digital service is dicey, we'll hang on to our analogue line for longer.

[Simon]

I can't speak for IDNet's VOIP service (as yet), but I regularly speak to someone who has made the switch to VOIP and the call quality seems fine. 

Of course, the issue remains that the VOIP system doesn't work in the event of a power cut or an internet outage, so that may be another factor to consider. 

[krysia]

Thanks, Simon - that's good to know.  Yes, power cuts will be a problem with this switchover, which sometimes makes me wonder if it will go ahead.

[nowster]

It all depends on the codec.

Typically the link to the "exchange" will use G.711 µ-law (64kbps, same as PSTN trunks) or G.726 (32kbps, same as DECT). These are as good as your existing phone line.

Some intercontinental calls often over-compress using more efficient lower bandwidth codecs, silence gating, etc. and sound awful.

[robinc]

At my last company we introduced a commercial hosted VOIP system and it served us very well indeed. OK it did require a lump of hardware to support it, but it worked. Call quality was excellent even to US and Australia and this was in the noughties.

Things have hopefully progressed in the technology, but there are still limitations. No experience, but my guess is that using an ATA adapter is not going to be the ideal solution and so buying into new tech will have to be the way to go - Dect phones etc..... but for many older users that will be a step too far I fear.

However, given the vast majority of modern mobile phones are capable of VoLTE or VoWifi I'm not sure why one would want to add another layer of stuff to look after and pay for.