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Net Calls Now Even Worse

Everybody knows that although calls over the net are much cheaper than over traditional phone, the quality is not the same. A recent study proves that not only it is true, but also that the quality of net calls is declining in the past couple of years.

Brix Networks, a company that managed the study, had found that call quality has declined by about 5 percent. About 20 percent of the studied calls had unacceptable quality. Brix explains that the decline in voice quality happens because voice services are increasingly competing for resources on the same IP network as other services such as music downloads, video and interactive gaming.

Many Internet companies that offer voice services, such as Google and Yahoo, are opposed to allowing phone companies, which own the underlying broadband networks, to prioritize traffic in order to improve call quality. Their fear is that network operators will abuse their power by charging unreasonably high prices and eventually squeeze out competing traffic. These companies have been calling for Congress to pass laws to restrict such practices.