Is it safe to say that that the quality of VOIP phone service is going to be fairly comparable from one provider to the next. My thinking here is that the quality of internet service would be the number one factor.
Joe
What do you mean by "quality"?
Voice quality is going to be about the same. QoS means the bandwidth and that could, could vary.
The word on the street is that VoIP services will compete on the basis of aux services, like voice email.
I've tried a few services and they are not all the same. The worst quality connection I've personally had was with SIPhone.com. Apparently, the calls within their IP to IP network are fine, but when I call from IP to POTS, I get a lag that makes the call unusable. They acknowledge this and blame their provider. The $10 I paid is good for two years, so I will try again later on.
I have used Broadvoice, Vonage, and Mutualphone and all three seem pretty comparable. Mutualphone is pretty much outgoing only. I'm currently using Vonage and I'm very satisfied with the service for $15/mo with 500 min anywhere in the US.
There are many factors that can affect VoIP service quality - what these are depends rather on the type of service.
With a residential "VoIP over Broadband" service for example, quality can be heavily dependant on the congestion level of the DSL or cable modem (although if the service provider gives you an access router/ gateway that supports prioritization of voice over data then this is mitigated).
Interconnections to the telephone network go through trunking gateways, and problems can occur due to misconfiguration or due to high levels of echo on the telephone network (non-IP) part of the connection. In some cases the service provider outsources the trunking gateway/ telephone network interconnection to an existing telephone company - problems can arise simply because it's hard to decide who is responsible for fixing problems and maintaining service quality.
The
Regards
Alan
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