A former employer once demanded that I scrap my timeworn landline telephone and fax. He insisted that I convert my home office to VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and PC-hosted faxing. The cost savings would be substantial, he promised, reminding me that he was footing the bills.
Indicating to my boss that Internet service in my neck of the woods wasn't entirely satisfactory and reliable, I declined, and he ultimately agreed. Thankfully I'm still a POTS (plain old telephone system) user.
I digress. The proposed VoIP scheme would have involved the company VPN (virtual private network), making my telephone service entirely dependent on what had already proven to be a poorly managed corporate IT department. Not a pretty picture. Besides, with unlimited POTS calling service already in place in my home office, I could use my landlines for personal and private use after business hours. There were also times when I would field calls, both business and personal, after hours, when my PC was off.
Although I didn't make all of these points to my former boss, I did use voice quality (or the lack thereof) as the basis of my argument to reject VoIP. A lot of incoming network and cell phone calls were poor quality. Oftentimes, speech was choppy or truncated, voices were punctuated with low-frequency bursts of objectionable hum, and dropouts occurred in the middle of business conversations and teleconferences.
I'm not alone in this chaos. Lots of cell phone users suffer objectionable microphone pickup that amplifies background noise. Then there are those annoying echoes and clicks. There are also amplitude mismatches in the network that make it seem like the other party is speaking too loudly or too softly. My personal pet peeve is the lack of sidetone that results in people literally shouting into their handsets.
Now I realize that many folks use mobile phones exclusively. Indeed, in some places in the world, the percentage of users relying on wireless phones to the exclusion of wired instruments exceeds 85%. But, poor voice quality, it turns out, is causing the communications industry to lose customers, sales, and confidence.
Poor cellular coverage, blocked calls, dropped calls, and rotten voice quality are the culprits. Some industry observers say dissatisfaction with cell phone and VoIP voice quality causes roughly 80,000,000 subscribers annually to drop their wireless company or Internet Service Provider. Presumably these users either give up and go back to POTS or seek alternative ISPs.
For both Internet and mobile ISPs, lost service spells lost revenue. There's the obvious expense of replacing subscribers, but there's also lost revenue as a result of terminating service before service agreements expire. There's also the cost of returned phones, and the cost of fielding complaints from irate customers.
A recent industry
report indicated the cost of this discontent and churn was greater than $24 billion last year. Imagine losing huge chunks of your subscriber base on a routine basis. Would you want to be in a business where you'd lose a quarter of your customers annually? Incredibly, that's what service providers are experiencing. Not a pretty picture.
Comments? Questions? Write me at
amm at en-genius dot net, or post your comments on our blog.
