Anavon Technology Group: Does VoiP Offer Clear Calling?

Crystal Clear VoIP Calls Only Require a Good Internet Connection

Voice over Internet Protocol has become the de facto means of audio and visual communication over the internet in the information age. Whether you’re trying to maintain a sense of physical connection with a family member from a great distance or you want to be able to see business associates from across the globe during an early morning meeting, VoIP has become almost as ubiquitous as standard cellular and landline calls.

There are a nearly infinite number of programs and services for internet phone calls that people utilize today, from ooVoo to Facebook Messenger. The most beloved program for internet calls, Skype, has been around since 2003.

Whether you use VoIP for business or for personal calls, its benefits are undeniable: it can be accessed from smartphones, personal computers, and many other internet access devices; it can provide voice communication in areas that might not otherwise be able to receive cellular signals or run hard-wired landlines; and, since most voice call services are free—at least user-to-user—or otherwise very affordable, the only must have requirement is a strong internet connection.

The internet has changed significantly since its inception, and as access to bandwidth and improved upload and download speeds become the norm, voice and video calls over the internet have never been easier. Even the cheapest of internet packages can often provide you with enough bandwidth to engage in at least one concurrent internet call.

Of course if you’re using VoIP for business purposes, you may find yourself needing increased internet speed as the number of callers at any given time goes up. It’s not uncommon for a large business call to involve dozens of individual users from across the world. As long as your connection is both stable and strong, though, you need not fear: you’ll generally receive crystal clear audio and video.

A more powerful internet connection will reduce the variance in hard metrics that most VoIP services rate calls by: network packet loss, jitter, and latency. Because internet calls use various codecs to compress and decompress voice data—allowing it to travel via the internet efficiently—a strong internet connection is a must: most high quality internet calling services will require a minimum of 100 kilobits per second in both upload and download per caller. As a result, each unique caller compounds the required bandwidth for each participant. If you’ve got a lot of other programs jockeying for bandwidth usage on your modem, you may see a decrease in call quality.

At minimum, a broadband connection is a requirement for internet voice calls to remain stable and consistent in quality. The silver lining is, of course, that most areas offer broadband as the minimum standard of internet connectivity. As the days of dial-up are long gone, you won’t often find yourself lacking enough bandwidth to make a clear call over the internet.

Unfortunately, instability in your network can cause problems: interference from inclement weather, bandwidth-hogging programs, and—unsurprisingly—power outages or damaged power lines can result in an inability to make or sustain a phone call over the internet.

With all of that in mind, however, it should be clear that you’ll be able to utilize voice calls both for business and personal use in most circumstances. It’s even possible that, as the proliferation of high-speed internet like fiber cable and public WiFi become the norm, cellular data and home phones may vanish entirely, with the internet becoming the new standard means of long-distance communication.