Paul Taylor, VoiceFlex

London

Sales and marketing director

Quality of service (QOS) is something people should be aware of but it shouldn’t make or break the decision to switch to VoIP. What many people seem to have forgotten is that when telephone communications were first developed, the same concerns about quality and reliability existed.

Take mobile phones as an example. When they first came onto the market, handsets were cumbersome and no one had even heard of texting. But in today’s society they are now common place for both personal and business use, but bad reception and unreliable connections which still exist haven’t put people off relying on them for day-to-day communications.

In this case, occasional issues with QOS have become widely accepted. There is no reason why the same won’t happen with VoIP – after all, the potential cost savings to be had make it a far more attractive proposition when compared with the fact that if QOS is bad on your mobile you still pay the monthly fees and call charges. In fact, when ISDN services where first launched we had to go through exactly the same learning curve that we are experiencing now with internet telephony.

The quality of voice across a broadband connection can be guaranteed but currently at a cost. Like mobile phone service providers, broadband providers will bring out more feature rich offerings to combat the problem, driving down the cost for the end user. With the number of broadband connections in the UK set to reach 20 million over the next five years, increased competition between providers will only be good news, resulting in decreased costs and improved functionality.