Voice Delays

[CarlG]

The sound quality of my Telo is pretty good but there is one obvious and annoying problem with voice delay, as if the person I were calling were in a foreign country, when in fact she's just two streets over. The result is awkward gaps in the conversations and each of us talking over each other.

To illustrate the issue, if I call someone and count "1-2-3" in a steady tempo and ask the person on the other end to respond with "4" on the next beat, there is a big lag before it reaches me. Over the course of a conversation it is less noticible so I guess I'm getting used to it but I'd rather not have it.

Has anyone else experienced this and is there a remedy? FYI, I have the Telo between my modem and router and I have the QoS set to 2000 Upload speed.

[oompah]

I have noticed the same thing. When I first hooked up the Telo, I called myself using our old VOIP service. There was a 1-2 second voice lag. I wondered if it was a Voip-to-Voip issue (i.e., small lag from each, doubled). But it is definitely there some, if not all, of the time on calls. Sometimes it seems to get better as a call progresses. But sometimes we end up talking over each other. I don't know if it's universal and I sure don't know how to fix it, but I have seen a number of other complaints about lag, so I wonder if it's a "feature" and some folks are more sensitive to it than others. Never noticed it with our other VOIP service, so my conclusion is it's an ooma issue.

[rschletty]

I have noticed the delay or lagtime, too, and it is not a welcome "feature" of my Ooma service. I use the Ooma base and scout. I notice a roughly half-second delay in conversing with someone. We can't hear each other in "real time." I find myself talking over the other person because I thought they were finished with their sentence.

Will I be forced to ask people on the other end to say "over" – like a CB radio operator?

Yesterday, I had an echo in the conversation for a brief period...and that was very annoying.

I also notice that sometimes I have to say "hello" twice when receiving a call. Sometimes, the front end of a greeting from the person answering my call gets chopped off.

I did not notice this delay until weeks after my Ooma service was installed. Is it possible that Comcast is pulling a fast one by purposely adding a delay to Ooma phone call streams? I will be testing my Comcast speeds again. I went through painful and time consuming troubleshooting a few months ago and finally got the Comcast techs to admit they had a problem with the entire subnet in my neighborhood. They "fixed" the intermittent dropouts and extremely slow speeds, but I never have achieved the U/D speeds that I am paying for.

I simply want to know if the delay is a problem with the Ooma server or with my Comcast cable connection.

[oompah]

Our FIOS (2M/10M) line tests very clean and we have had no such problems with our previous VOIP service for >1 yr.; we have also occasionally had echoes (though we have gotten that rarely with our other VOIP). I am strongly suspicious it is ooma. They still have not responded to my tech support emails. I'm about ready to return mine to Amazon before the 30 d limit expires. Which is really too bad - I want to like/keep it.

[southsound]

I have both the older ooma hub and the newer Telo. My configuration is Actiontec DSL modem/wireless router > hub > Netgear FS 116 switch > Telo. My connection speed with Qwest is 1.5mbps down and 768kpbs (rated) and 1.29mb down / 729kbps up (actual). When I first connected my hub back 11 months ago, I had a period of time when the echo on some calls was terrible. You can search my thread for that period by searching for "looking for a normal telephone experience." It took ooma and I three weeks of hard work getting things right. I kept a log of calls and sent it to them periodically. They made adjustments and changes to their routing. Since March 18 of 2009 my ooma service has been stellar. I don't use that word lightly. Most people find my ooma calls more clear than my calls from my landline. With any telephone circuit there is a degree of delay because you have to allow the signal to travel over a distance - and even though the speed of travel is great, when you add up the miles and the inherent delays caused by processing, it cannot be instantaneious. I don't have any problem with people complaining about the delay. What is kind of comical is that the connection is so quiet that people sometimes say, "are you still there?" With most landline service there is always enough background noise that they know the connection is still open - with my ooma systems (and some good Uniden DECT 6 handsets) things get very, very quiet when there is no talking going on. I guess you might assume that I'm very happy with ooma and my call quality. You would be right!

[JTalbert]

I am new to Ooma and the other night noticed a voice delay myself. I was calling my Ooma line to see how the call monitoring worked, My daughter heard me talking over the Ooma and got excited. I picked up my ooma handset to pick up the call to see how that worked, and thought that was really nice. So my daughter wanted to talk, so I gave her my Ooma handset while I used my normal line, The voice from me onto Ooma came across right away, but there was a two second delay when talking from the Ooma line before it was registered over the land line.

I currently have Cox telephone and never had that problem. I have about 20mbs down and 3mbs up, so I dont know why there should be any problems with Ooma working, especially since its normally configured to use 384 up under the setup.ooma.com , would I currently have mine set to 764, would increasing it anymore or decreasing it make any difference? Or will I always be stuck with this issue? I paid $40 to have my number ported, never got an email from Ooma saying they got confirmation from my current phone company. I am wondering if I would just box it back up, call Ooma, cancel the service and cancel the port???

[Groundhound]

I am new to Ooma and the other night noticed a voice delay myself. I was calling my Ooma line to see how the call monitoring worked, My daughter heard me talking over the Ooma and got excited. I picked up my ooma handset to pick up the call to see how that worked, and thought that was really nice. So my daughter wanted to talk, so I gave her my Ooma handset while I used my normal line, The voice from me onto Ooma came across right away, but there was a two second delay when talking from the Ooma line before it was registered over the land line.

I currently have Cox telephone and never had that problem. I have about 20mbs down and 3mbs up, so I dont know why there should be any problems with Ooma working, especially since its normally configured to use 384 up under the setup.ooma.com , would I currently have mine set to 764, would increasing it anymore or decreasing it make any difference? Or will I always be stuck with this issue? I paid $40 to have my number ported, never got an email from Ooma saying they got confirmation from my current phone company. I am wondering if I would just box it back up, call Ooma, cancel the service and cancel the port???

I've long noticed a discernible delay if I make a similar test, like if I call from my cell to my Ooma line and listen on both while I talk, or if someone else in the same room is on the cell and I'm on the Ooma line. Thing is, such tests are not how folks normally use phones, and in normal use talking to someone not within earshot, we don't notice it. YMMV.

[JTalbert]

I've long noticed a discernible delay if I make a similar test, like if I call from my cell to my Ooma line and listen on both while I talk, or if someone else in the same room is on the cell and I'm on the Ooma line. Thing is, such tests are not how folks normally use phones, and in normal use talking to someone not within earshot, we don't notice it. YMMV.

Thats good to know and makes sense. I was surprised at the delay since I have made a few calls on it to the outside world and did not have any problems.

Thanks for the info

[oompah]

I was on the phone with ooma support earlier today. The service mostly behaved, of course, except for occasional, explosive pops coming in that he didn't hear. I have been having a variety of pretty intermittent problems - echo, dropped calls, incoming voice breaking up for 5-10 seconds - and consistent voice delay. I had set my QoS to 1700 based on speed tests. Someone on the forums suggested turning it off, which I did. Today, support told me to set it to 1800 and was sure that would fix my problems. I pointed out that we kept talking over each other because of voice lag. I then asked him to respond as soon as I said 3 when counting to 3. Voice delay was 1.5 seconds, which seems typical. He then bumped my request up and gave me a trouble ticket. But I'm not sure I can hold onto the Telo to find out if they can fix - at the end of my 30 d return period.

Our other/previous VOIP does not have this problem (nor the other issues). Are there folks who actually do NOT have voice lag with ooma? I.e., is it "a feature, not a bug"?

[Mike-o-Matic]

Back in late November when I activated my Hub, I had minor (~1/3 sec.) delays for the first few days. But then the delays cleared up, almost as if the network traffic somehow "learned" and became better shaped and optimized. Coincidence maybe?

Since then, any delays have been very, very rare. And when it does happen, it's different than it was those first few days. Now, it's only when I'm talking to either my boss, or my one sister - both whom are on cellphones. And not always. These delays are different because they're very brief. They're *just* enough to be noticed, but not interrupt the flow of conversation badly. I think they may be due to the added, brief radio transmission back-and-forth to/from the cellphone.