VoIP Quality from bad to worse

July 25, 2006
Brix Networks, a company that develops monitoring tools for service providers, analyzed data it gathered from a Web site it created a couple of years ago called TestYourVoIP.com. The site does a bandwidth test and allows consumers to test the quality of their VoIP services. In its study, published Monday, the company stated that call quality has declined by about 5 percent in the past 18 months. Further, nearly 20% (1 in 5) VoIP calls have unacceptable quality.

This seems overly inflated to me. Surely, 20% of calls can't be that bad or customers would switch from VoIP back to landlines. Me thinks this study is skewed to help build some publicity for Brix Networks. In fact, several bloggers and newsites have covered this study already.

Also, part of the About Brix Networks states, "to offer reliable and high-quality experiences in voice, video, data, and mobile services". So obviously, it behooves them to say that QoS monitoring is necessary - that's the service they sell.

Or perhaps Brix Networks in in cahoots with strong net neutrality proponents to try and prove that net neutrality is needed to prevent the cable MSOs, and broadband carriers from "squeezing" out VoIP players by throttling their bandwidth.

Or it could simply be all those MySpace blogs and YouTube videos clogging the damn Net! You make the call.

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Tracked on September 15, 2006 7:47 PM

Comments to VoIP Quality from bad to worse


  1. John Griswald :
    July 25, 2006 11:13 AM

    Are you sure it isn't the series of tubes causing the problem?

    I hear the Internet is like a truck.

    Ok, enough bad Senator Ted Stevens jokes.

    I'm not buying this "research" study either.


  1. Greg Broiles :
    July 25, 2006 7:57 PM

    I think it's also perfectly possible that the results aren't cooked, but are also not representative of most VoIP calls.

    My typical use of testyourvoip.com is (a) if I am in a new place and am curious about the quality of VoIP call I can expect given local network conditions; and (b) if I am having quality issues with VoIP calls, and want to get some sort of external validation and measurement, since it can be tough sometimes to figure out if the problems are caused by my network, somewhere on the backbone, or perhaps by the network/telco/equipment at the other end of the call.

    So testyourvoip.com's view of my VoIP experience is likely to be skewed negatively - when I'm at home or at work (where I've already got connections good enough to support good quality VoIP calls) I don't tend to use their website.

    Also, when I have suggested VoIP to others, I typically simultaneously suggest they use testyourvoip.com to get an idea about local conditions before they invest a lot of time or money in VoIP conversion or experimentation. Again, these uses are not representative of typical VoIP calls.


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