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International Call Quality

Posted: Fri May 29, 2009 10:59 pm
by Magus
My Ooma works great here at home in California. When placing international calls, however, the quality drops noticeably. So much so, in fact, that I use an international calling card, when I would have been happy to spend the money with Ooma. The calling card is cheaper and I would be surprised if it did not equally depend on VOIP for part of its international connection. Now I don't know if Ooma has partners who are below par or what, but there is a difference. In addition, the Ooma international service has the feel of a calling card with the announcement of credit and all that, which takes away from the feel of a seamless, permanent international service. It's like using money union instead of an international bank transfer. Considering International calling is one of the few revenue streams for Ooma, paying attention to international call quality should be important to Ooma. Here's what I suggest:

1. Choose partners carefully, based on quality of service, available capacity and cost, in this order. Reliability is king. Also, there is no need to overcharge on less popular destinations. It is a mistake other companies make and end up loosing as people use pre-paid cards instead. The strategy should be to capture every call and every penny, not to loose some calls because some dimwit in the partner company overpriced it.

2. Provide options for making International service look more seamless, option to switch off credit announcements (makes us sound like students counting pennies on prepaid phones, also less delay before connecting e.g. a fax) and direct debiting from credit cards for replenishing in options of $10, $25, $50 or $100 increments (returnable upon demand).

3. Keep stats of dropped calls ( I get these routinely on longer international calls), jitter, echo, retries, latency from server records and be first to notice quality variability, keeping ahead of the client.

Anyways, good luck getting International to get out of amateur mode.

Re: International Call Quality

Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:42 am
by Zandramas
I placed a international call and quality was great!

Re: International Call Quality

Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:39 pm
by Magus
Thanks Zandramas. Was you call placed to Europe or further afield?

Re: International Call Quality

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 9:08 pm
by oomg
I have called UK and Itally... everything worked great... if only I could speak Italian.

Re: International Call Quality

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 12:02 am
by Dennis P
Hi Magus,

Thanks for your thoughtful post. Can you tell me where you are trying to call? International call quality can vary in quality much more then domestic calls and if you let us know where you are having problems, we can address it.

We track our partners closely on many aspects of their service level, but cannot always tell from the statistics that there is a problem, so please feed this back to us.

We're planning to make it easier in the Lounge to report call quality problems so that we can be more proactive about partner issues. We are also planning to streamline the calling experience so that you can auto-recharge and opt-out of the balance/time-remaining prompts.

Thanks.

Re: International Call Quality

Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 11:48 pm
by internetizen
I made few calls to Taiwan. I could hear my own echo...
BTW, do you guys know how to check the balance or how much was used?

Re: International Call Quality

Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2009 1:33 pm
by internetizen
I made two calls to Hong Kong cell. It said it was connecting. I waited and waited without any sound. It doesn't seem work to me...

Re: International Call Quality

Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 11:44 am
by rickdom
I have the same issue of calling Taiwan. 50% chance the call will be connected but we can not hear each other. 25% change the call Quality is lower than acceptable (choppy/echo/no clear sound)

Enviroment: Cox cable 5M/down 2M/UP.

Re: International Call Quality

Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 9:23 pm
by stevepow
Just got all this hooked up - our first call out of US was to Panama City, Panama. It was not so good - person on the other line said "sounds like you are calling over the Internet". :-( Apparently there were chopped off words and it was difficult for my wife and the person she called to know who was talking when.

I had talked to my mother earlier, US long distance / in state, and she said it sounded fine. So...

We plan to test all this out extensively over the next week to make sure this setup is a keeper - calling Panama, UK, and US long distance. I'd like to dump my 2nd land line and jettison some of the expensive long distance charges, but it has to sound decent or what's the point.

We'll try that *99 thing too, but if that is what it takes to sound good, that feature needs to be turned on by default so that it also gets incoming calls.

Re: International Call Quality

Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 4:14 am
by WoodyR
My international call experience is not so great. I wonder which carrier Ooma uses. I would love to use Ooma for all my international calls (even with slightly higher rate than other calling cards such as pingo), but the call quality (must be the carrier, not ooma) and lack of support made me think alternatives. Neverthless, some incomplete calls are being charged - although the charges are minimus. Hope Ooma has some plan to improve international call service.