Comment by dv35z | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dv35z | Hacker News Reader

A bit off-topic, but a call-out to those tech consultants who often work remotely (using VOIP to interface with POTS):

At the previous tech company I worked at, we used Avaya VOIP phones (5000+ employees). The phones could be used at home (with a remote access point - RAP - plugged into your router). One thing that always impressed me was just how clear, crisp, and low-latency the audio was for VOIP. I'd pick up the handset and the dial-tone was immediately there; while on conference calls, I could easily interject comments (whereas with Skype, there is always an annoying delay). While working at this company, I would literally bring this big ol' corporate deskphone with my while traveling (e.g. south america, London, etc), and it was great having a perfect call connection anywhere there is decent internet.

My question is - for those folks who work remotely 100% (or often): Have you found a VOIP phone solution that really works well for you? I bough an Ooma handset, and I'm sorry to say that the audio is still clouded, muffled, and has latency. Plus, the handset (the home/residential one) just feels... flaky. Without having much experience with other VOIP phone systems, I'm really looking for a solid corporate desk phone (handset, but also very clear remote headset) - it's got to be as good as an in-office phone, interface with POTS, and also be portable for travel. I do a lot of consulting, and am on phone calls sometimes 4-5+ hours a day, so it'd be great to have a comfortable powerful solution that can handle this.

Would love to hear anyone's thoughts and experience on this. My Ooma purchase was an bit of a costly experiment...

I'm surprised how much, as consumers, people will put up with in terms of bad audio. I think cell phones really helped lower the bar when the connections were bad but the mobility was unrivaled. I used to hate calling someone's cell phone because the land-line was generally crystal clear and responsive.

Granted, things have improved a lot over the last 10 years, both in cell phones and internet calling. However, video conferencing still seems pretty obsessed with figuring out a way to get high definition video and both audio quality (from the connection and the equipment) and latency haven't improved significantly for major video conferencing solutions.

Mobile audio is awful because we are oversubscribed. My first mobile was a CDMA PCS phone. My first call on it was for a date. My date assumed I was calling from home on a land line. I was at her front door. The audio was so clean it was indistinguishable from a landline.

Later on, as CDMA phones grew in popularity, the multiplexing grew and the bandwidth shrank. Also codecs got more efficient by flattening the audio. All the atmosphere is stripped from the audio and voice calls got very sterile.

That's the beauty of FaceTime Audio. Awesome quality, as long as you aren't driving. Unfortunately, only ,y wife and I seem to use it!

I use FT Audio and whatsapp as well. FT calls are answerable right away while Whatsapp calls have a whole process: swipe, unlock, find app, open app. By the time I get in my Whatsapp caller has given up. 10 seconds later they'll make a normal cellphone call.

> I'm surprised how much, as consumers, people will put up with in terms of bad audio. I think cell phones really helped lower the bar when the connections were bad but the mobility was unrivaled. I used to hate calling someone's cell phone because the land-line was generally crystal clear and responsive.

VoLTE has been rolling out (slowly) over the past few years, but has hit a human-based stumbling block. People now expect background noise on phone calls, and may mistake its absence for a signal that the call has been dropped.

I work for a hosted VoIP company.

>> it was great having a perfect call connection anywhere there is decent internet.

Thats the catch. The internet service has to be good enough for VoIP. Many times, having the right router is key.

>> I'd pick up the handset and the dial-tone was immediately there;

As long as the handset thinks its registered, dial tone will be immediate.

As far as the Ooma experience goes, if you can change the codecs for your device to use something like G722 rather than the normal PCMU/PCMA or GSM, call quality should be good. What handset did you get for your Ooma service ?

Thanks for replying! When I had the Avaya phone, in most all locations & conditions, if there was decent (e.g. a non-tech person's home in latin america, an apartment in London, a residential cable modem in turkey) - the call was crystal clear. Meanwhile, Skype, Google Voice, Viber, and even WebEx sounded cloudy. I always wanted to know what the "secret sauce" was that allowed this device (or the company-hosted server behind it) to have this quality.

Regarding Ooma, I have the portable handset here: http://www.ooma.com/telo/

And I bought the headset (which connects to the base station as another phone, rather TO the phone. The process to simply dial a number and use the headset is comically complicated to "join" the calls...)

If you have any specific advice for this setup, I'd be appreciative. Likewise, if you have other recommendations for solutions, I'm all ears. Thanks again!

Try a Polycom. You can usually get good deals on used phones.

Ultimately, the quality mostly depends on who is running the voip system. I have a fancy pants Cisco phone on my desk with a premium headset that combined costs as much as a nice laptop. But it sounds like a turd, because our network folks want to save precious bandwidth. The phone itself can do HD audio and all sorts of fancy things.

The headset is easy -- just spend more. Find a Jabra or Polycom that integrates with your phones hook and volume controls. Good ones are $200. The one I have has ridiculously long range and good sound.

Any recommendation for backend VOIP service? I can buy a phone on Amazon, but obviously need to get it connected somewhere. Any thoughts on that?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com