New insights into the performance of leading VoIP providers were recently released by Keynote Systems, a company that specializes in Internet and mobile test and measurement services. Keynote???s third VoIP competitive intelligence study revealed that overall VoIP quality has improved across the board since Keynote???s last study in December 2005 and that the leading VoIP providers have actually surpassed PSTN (traditional phone service) in overall audio quality, but still lag behind PSTN in audio delay.
Twelve leading VoIP providers were part of the benchmark study, including AT&T, Comcast Time Warner Cable, and Verizon. Keynote measured the relative performance of the leading VoIP providers in the New York and San Francisco markets, including digital cable, adapter-based VoIP (hard phone) and PC-based software (soft phone) services, as well as the performance of leading VoIP providers against PSTN service in those cities. Keynote then rated the leading VoIP service providers on critical performance factors that influence the end-user experience using Keynote Voice Perspective??, which is Keynote???s VoIP quality test and measurement product.
The company found that overall reliability among the various competing VoIP providers had improved across the board and that the leading digital cable providers had in fact outperformed PSTN in overall reliability. Overall reliability is a computed index score based on performance measurements in three performance factors: service availability, average number of dial attempts and dropped calls.
Leading digital cable VoIP providers were also found to deliver better audio quality than the competition, with the leading cable providers achieving excellent audio responsiveness (a measure of audio delay) and audio clarity (measured by Mean Opinion Score, or MOS), two key contributors to overall audio quality.
Improved VoIP quality is more important than ever, as analysts estimate that residential adoption of VoIP service will grow to more than 26 million homes in 2008 in the United States, up from 6.5 Million in 2004. ???As VoIP continues to move into the mainstream and challenge the incumbent carriers in major markets nationwide, consumers have started focusing on two important differentiators, audio quality and pricing,??? said Vik Chaudhary, vice president of marketing and product management at Keynote. ???As the results of the Keynote study indicate, VoIP providers have overcome a major hurdle in the past seven months by addressing concerns about overall audio quality, but they still have work to do to improve the consistency of their service levels during peak versus non-peak hours and to decrease the variation in performance levels between the top performers and the rest of the pack.???
Read more about the study in the press release Leading VoIP Providers Outperform Regular Phone Carriers in Overall Audio Quality, Keynote Reports.
