Voice Quality For VoIP Becoming A Requirement

“As (VoIP) bankruptcies and closures proliferate there's going to be a flight to quality.” Rich Nespola
The Management Network Group

The cost advantage of deploying voice service over IP networks has rocked the world of carriers and consumers. The remarkable economics of IP networks allows carriers to offer historically low prices for voice service, creating a market where the number of VoIP subscribers worldwide is increasing more than 45 percent annually.

Voice quality, however, has been a secondary consideration in rush to serve subscribers who only want to make calls for pennies on the dollar, and are willing to trade quality for price.

Now that's beginning to change. As the VoIP market matures, the priorities for subscribers are shifting. For callers around the world who now depend on VoIP as their primary voice service, voice quality has moved to the top of the list, causing carriers to pay close attention to their R-Value and the resulting Mean Opinion Score (MOS).

This shift is affecting entire markets. For communications providers delivering conferencing services to corporate clients, voice quality now is a hard requirement. There's little appetite for trading quality for price when participants on a conference call can't understand each other.

Consumers are not far behind.

Despite the price appeal of VoIP, people making calls still want to hear, and be heard—clearly.