Intermittent Audio during phone call?
A lot of the negative reviews we get all have one thing in common, actually it’s 2; bad customer service seems to be a common complaint but another is choppy or intermittent audio during a phone call. Over the past week or so I have had the same problem with my VoIP service. I’m still working on it!!
So what causes it? A lack of bandwidth is one cause. Run this speed test and make sure you have at least a 200Kbs in the uplink and downlink direction. Another cause which can be related to lack of bandwidth is packet loss, every time a packet is lost in the network you are loosing some audio. How can you tell what your packet loss is? - well type the following command in a DOS or command window on your PC “ping -n 100 yahoo.com” don’t type the quotes. This command sends a small packet of information to yahoo.com servers and they send a reply saying they got it. The -n 100 just runs the same test 100 times. Try it a few times and see the results. If you are not using your VoIP phone you shouldn’t see any more than about a 1% packet loss. More than about 3% to 5% and the audio drop out becomes very noticeable.
A lot of problems users of VoIP have is that they don’t follow the setup instructions they get - I know because I have helped so many friends read their instructions 
. It is important to put your ATA directly after your modem and then connect you PC or router to the ATA. Your ATA probably has Quality of Service (QoS) built into it, in that it gives priority to your voice - which is what you want.
If you type the ping command at your command terminal while you are using your VoIP phone you’ll probably see an increase in packet loss - this is actually a good thing as you ATA is giving priority to the voice packets.
Not all VoIP problems are related to your internet however a good portion of them are, unfortunately you suffer and the VoIP company gets the blame. So, before cancelling your VoIP service test yout internet connection. If it is bad then you’ll just have the same problems with your next VoIP provider.
I’ll let you know the cause of mine when I Know.
Calum
