One thing I wish for in my quest for perfect Internet phone service the ability is to fix voice quality problems on the fly or at least be able to understand “is it me or the network?”

When I had Vonage service, I usually started the converation with “So how do I sound, can you hear me?” Many times there was such a delay that practical converation was impossible. If I was at my computer, I’d try quitting applications to see if that helped (usually not). After hanging up in frustration, I’d try messing with the dreaded ”Bandwidth Saver” feature. But in my opinion, AFTER the call is way too late.

Is it possible to build intelligent applications that KNOW when they’re not performing optimally and can tell you what the problem is, or better yet advise how to fix it?

No sooner had I written this when Peter Csathy, CEO of SightSpeed, let me in on a little secret (okay well it’s not actually a secret…), SightSpeed detects when your video or voice call isn’t going so well and automatically makes adjustments to improve the quality.

For example, a video call that appears jumpy or out of sync with the audio could be caused by network congestion. SightSpeed can downsize the bandwidth usage for video so that at least the voice aspect of the call is preserved or improved. SightSpeed lets you know it’s doing this by popping up a dialog box that says it’s making these adjustments. I don’t know if you can you make adjustments yourself DURING a video call, but you can easily see your upload and download speeds while talking to someone.

To see SightSpeed statistics: 

With your mouse hovering over the SightSpeed title bar,  press CTRL + S (or right mouse-click followed by CTRL + S). A statistics dialog box appears showing your current, peak and average bandwidth usage.

Gizmo Project has a Call Quality Assistant (click the bar graph in the bottom left of the Gizmo Window) that gives you an idea of your network conditions. While it shows you at a glance the quality of your connection, it doesn’t say what you should do about it and at this point in my life, that’s what I need.

 

Bloggers like Andy and Phoneboy have made mention of Gizmo Project growing pains and bugs. Sometimes timing is everything because I was just thinking that. Well, maybe I’m feeling a little cranky today. I haven’t seen the problems Andy and Phoneboy have, but I do see other Gizmo-related errors and general “not responding” messages regularly, and it’s getting me down.

I’ve also never been able to get GizmoCall to work for me at all despite numerous pleas to tech support and the forums. I reported on it’s launch but was waiting to give a user opinion. Never happened. I really think that Gizmo is going in the right direction with the additional services like SMS, web calling, integration with other IM networks. I recently decided to use Gizmo as my primary chat interface since I can integrate with MSN,Yahoo, Google, and others. A new features lets you import your MSN contact list into Gizmo at one shot instead of laboriously one by one. And Gizmo is SO easy to set up with the Nokia N95 which means I can use it to make mobile internet calls.  I also use Gizmo to handle all my incoming calls through GrandCentral. Another big plus.

When the sun is shining you can overlook application not responding and other weirdness. But you can also get tired of making excuses. Sigh. I feel it’s kind of like a great outfit, love the color, the style, looks good on me, perfect for the occasion, but it doesn’t quite fit right.

As a little postscript to that Bye Bye Vonage post, I discovered that while Vonage customer support is 247, if you want to CANCEL their service you have to call during business hours (between 9 and 4:55 Eastern). I’m on Pacific time so it took me three tries. Guess they don’t want to make it too convenient if you plan on jumping ship!

But they were very polite, and even offered me free service for a few months to see if they could fix my voice quality problems. I was tempted, but like most people, I don’t want to spend my time friggin’ around with tech support trying to fix it. It ’s not good use of my time. I want it just TO WORK.

I opted to pay the $50 cancellation fee and just move on…

Well, after eight uneventful months, Vonage and I are parting ways.  Perhaps not the most auspicious way to start off a blog about VoIP but I’m being honest here. I’m not going to go into a big rant. Flame throwing just isn’t my style. I don’t hate Vonage. The service just wasn’t financially making sense for me. The phone usage in my business isn’t enough to warrant a fixed monthly plan, even one as low as $24.99. Plus in my area the call quality wasn’t pristine. And some people do get excellent voice over Vonage. But I generally experienced crackling and lag on most calls.

If anyone has comments on Vonage quality in their area, let me know.

From the Vonage forums, it’s clear that call quality varies tremendously from region to region. My advice is that if the VOIP service, Vonage, SunRocket or whatever, isn’t what you expect, try something else. The VOIP marketplace is growing by leaps and bounds, and as a consumer you should shop around.

But now that I’ve done Vonage, it’s time to move on over to other VOIP solutions. Skype, SightSpeed, and Gizmo are the free ones on my radar and make the most sense for me given my business.

If you’re thinking of cancelling Vonage, I suggest you read Tom Keating’s post on cancelling his Vonage service. He recorded the entire call with the Vonage customer service rep (what a rascal), and transcribed it.

All in all, don’t be surprised if Vonage does more than ask you a few questions to get you to reconsider your decision to abandon ship. Like Tom, I decided to cancel Vonage recently (after only about 6 months). My call quality was terrible. While I didn’t get into quite the same pressure cooker, the Vonage rep did try to get me to reconsider, offering a few free month’s service, a chat with tech support, etc.

The rep also tried to make me think I was making a big mistake, a bad decision. I was a little taken aback. When I return something in a store, often I’m asked for the reason for the return. Never do I get into a debate about it. Kind of unnerving.

I wonder if they’d have better success if they just said “I sorry you had this experience with Vonage. It sounds like you’re pretty frustrated. I see why you’d want to cancel. But is there any way I could get you to reconsider? Would you be willing to try a couple more things to fix your problems before cancelling?” And if the answer is No, then the answer is No. Thanks and goodbye.

Iristel is the first to bring HD VOIP to Canada.

Whoa…I don’t think I can handle this. We just recently enduring a long and arduous process of researching and purchasing our first “big” screen TV with…heaven help me…HD-high definition. You see in Canada it’s important to actually see the puck when the Canucks are playing. Apparently this is impossible on a 21″ tube TV with a pink stripe across the top of the screen. (Who knew?)

Maybe fellow bloggers can help me out here, but is HD VOIP something that consumers should consider when choosing a VOIP service, or is it more marketing lingo to work through? As I understand it, HD, high definition, or wideband VOIP refers to voice sampling at 16 kHz rather than at the measley 8 kHz supported by the PSTN and just about everyone else. If you capture voice with a wider spectrum of frequencies, the quality is better. They say it’s like comparing the quality of AM and FM radio. (See this article from voip-info.org).

Sounds good to me, but the catch is you have to have HD end to end in a VOIP call. It’s no good having 16 kHz at one end and 8 kHz at the other. In fact, 16 kHz downsampled to 8 kHz (which happens if you are calling a landline) may sound worse than 8 kHz from start to finish.

So I guess you can make the argument that HD or wideband VOIP is wasted on the masses when most calls travel partially over the PSTN or use VOIP networks using an 8 kHz voice capture process.

Laptop magazine has a review of Fring, Talkster, Nimbuzz and Barablu. These four apps turn your good old cell phone into an internet phone and more. Of the four, Nimbuzz is new to me and Barablu I haven’t tried yet. Fring and Talkster I’ve used and quite like, although I think having a great handset makes all the difference. I wouldn’t bother with any of these if I didn’t have the Nokia N80i to test with.

The review does a good job of capturing the typical setup process for all applications, and gives both the pros and cons of usability, call quality and the like. Author Joanna Stern points out that “regardless of which mobile VoIP service you use, you’re going to need an unlimited data plan, which costs anywhere from $5.99 per month (T-Mobile) to $24.99 (Cingular)”.

Edited May 17, 2007:

James Wanless of Talkster clarified for me that their service in fact does not require a data plan:

Thanks James

Tom Keating recently talked about how to pure VOIP providers like Vonage stack up against the cable and telco companies offering broadband Internet VOIP phone services.

In the article he compares pure VOIP providers like Vonage and Packet8 to telecos and cable companies like Verizon and Time Warner. What do consumers really want? Is cost always the bottom line or are people looking for brand trust, quality of service and reliability over the long haul? His assessment may surprise you.

Click here to read the complete article on his blog.

Who is Tom Keating? He owns the VOIP and Gadgets Blog and is CTO, VP and founder of TMC Labs, one of the leading sources for unbiased opinions and reviews in the VoIP, call center, datacom/telecom industries.

 

I’ve had my PhoneGnome for about a week now and so far I’m really happy with it. What a great product! It marries the best of low cost Internet calling with the safety and reliability of regular landline service. It just works…

PhoneGnome-to-PhoneGnome calls are crystal clear and regular landline calls are, well, regular landline calls. PhoneGnome detects which type of call (Internet or PSTN) you’re making, makes a short announcement to let you know how it is going to place the call, and away you go.

I had a few problems setting up PhoneGnome to use an Internet phone service for outbound long distance calls, in my case a Gizmo Project account. To use Gizmo, I had to enter the SIP settings manually. My mistake was in entering my SIP phone number. Make sure you enter the phone number assigned by Gizmo Project without any dashes, spaces, dots, etc. Once I fixed that, smooth sailing.

While PhoneGnome can certainly work with Gizmo Project and other SIP friendly Internet Telephone Service Providers (ITSP), it’s better to sign on with one of PhoneGnome’s ITSP partners, says David Beckenmeyer,  CEO. Their partners are better integrated with PhoneGnome so you don’t have to worry about entering scary stuff like SIP credentials. At the moment, they offer VocalNet ($14.95 and $21.95/month) and Infonex (pay as you go) services.

Because PhoneGnome is really plug and play, it’s something I can sell my parents on. It’s not too weird or too techy, it configures itself, 911 still works like you expect, and you get dial tone even if your Internet flakes out. Did I mention it just works?

Carolyn Schuk from Voxilla has an interesting post on TelTel, who she calls one of IP communications’ best kept secrets:

“With an estimated 2 million registered international users for its service, TelTel is probably one of the best-kept secrets in VoIP. By comparison, Jeff Pulver’s much better-known Free World Dialup, has some 600,000 users.”

Now, two million is a pretty big number so I thought I’d give the TelTel softphone a try (I’ll be honest and say I hadn’t heard of them unitl now).

I was pleasantly surprised by the packaging. The software has a nice look and feel to it and I think the installation and account setup really have the novice user in mind. For new users, the first tip of the day is a handy glossary of screen symbols. Unfortunately, there’s no way to find it again once you dismiss the window. Oh well….

Further exploration of the software revealed a few problems. I experienced delays and serious hang-time as I clicked various screen elements and links (such as Buy Credit, Help and the user forum of all things). Plus, when I tried to make a call, I got the add contact dialog box instead. 

I’m also not sure what’s free about this service and what’s not. TelTel subscriber to subscriber calls are free, and TelTel to landline phones are subject to low calling rates (nothing new here), but what about TelTel to SIP phone numbers, or SIP phones to TelTel?

While the marketing message is that TelTel is Skype-like but SIP-driven, I’m going to stick with GizmoProject until this softphone lives up to its looks.