VoIP Study in UK raises questions

A recent study in the UK has concluded that VoIP just is not cutting it when compared with traditional wire-line services. However, we wonder if they should look beyond the obvious and question the reasons why respondents felt the quality was not up to par.

The vast majority of broadband users in the UK are on ADSL lines provided by BT. And a great number of these lines are running at 512Kbps or below. We have used our Vonage VoIP adapter behind cable modems at two locations in the US and behind our 512Kbps BT broadband line here in the UK, and there is definitely a difference. In fact it is so much so that we recently upgraded the service to 1Mbps (although we are getting an effective rate between 1.5-2.2Mbps), and we can already see better results. We have two lines running into our adapter, and we can use them simultaneously if need be with very good quality.

As to the stability of the services, we just have not found that there is any appreciable problem with trying to make a call. Admittedly, we have only worked with one supplier here, Pipex, but they have been stable and available whenever we needed to make a call.

So, our take on the survey is: run it again after BT has finished their current 1Mbps upgrade program. We think the result will be somewhat different!