The number of companies using
IP telephony and services related to it is continuing on a
steady incline. The quality of the calls and services, however, is
failing to catch up, according to a recent study.
Psytechnics Ltd., provider of voice, video and multimedia
quality testing tools, released a study this month highlighting
that
call quality continues to fall short. The survey queried IP
telephony users on the show floor of VoiceCon San Francisco last
month.
According to the survey, more than 64% of respondents use some
form of an IP telephony solution, and of those who do not have IP
telephony deployed, 68% plan to roll it out within the next
year.
And while enterprises continue to invest heavily in IP telephony
technology, more than 60% said they have major concerns about
quality levels, the survey found.
Most respondents placed the blame on unreliable service providers
and multi-vendor deployments, saying those were key to their IP
telephone frustrations. As the number of IP telephony deployments
continues to rise, so do the number of complaints about quality.
The survey found that 62% of enterprises questioned that use IP
telephony have experienced poor quality in some form, blaming
service providers or the challenge of managing multi-vendor
networks as the cause.
Psytechnics uses the term quality of experience (QoE) to
describe call quality. The company's CTO, Mike Hollier, said QoE
tools can monitor at the network and application levels to identify
and diagnose issues that affect quality and resolve performance
issues quickly.
"We've encountered a number of enterprises that are suffering
with voice performance problems that go undetected by typical IP
QoS tools," he said. "In these instances, IP QoS tools indicate a
green light, but end users are throwing up their hands in
exasperation with voice application issues such as speech
distortion, hiss and echo."
While the study found that IP telephony deployments have been on
the rise, results showed that it will continue to grow, remaining
top of mind for businesses in 2008. Fifty-seven percent of
respondents indicated that IP telephony is their No. 1
communications investment priority for next year, while 33% said
unified communications, which is a facet of IP telephony, will be a
major initiative for 2008.