Category: Blog

Voice over IP is the new standard when it comes to business telephony.

In VoIP, voice is converted into data packets and sent over the internet using communications protocols. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) are both commonly used protocols for data transfer over the internet.

But how do you decide which is better for your business VoIP system? Here we compare TCP versus UDP, so you understand how these protocols affect VoIP calls.

Is TCP or UDP Ideal for VoIP?

The short answer is that UDP provides a better experience for VoIP users. Using UDP will help minimize network jitter and latency to ensure strong connections for your business phone calls.

Why Do TCP and UDP matter for VoIP?

Well, VoIP sends data packets over the internet.

These data packets consist of a header, which includes information about where the packet comes from and where it should go. They also have a payload, which is the actual data being transported by the packet.

TCP and UDP are just two different types of data packets. Both carry a payload and use internet protocols, but each works slightly differently.

Why is UDP Better Than TCP for VoIP?

Well, VoIP traffic is fast-flowing. A typical data packet contains 10 to 30 milliseconds of audio. Essentially, many, many data packets are sent one after the other. If a few packets are lost here and there, your conversation will probably remain unaffected.

Here’s an example:

Picture a well-trafficked highway; if one of the cars on the highway breaks down, you wouldn’t stop the flow of traffic just to wait for that one car. It’s better to just maintain the flow of traffic.

In the case of VoIP, TCP tries to recover lost packets, causing retransmission delays which stop the flow of voice traffic. UDP lets voice traffic continue to flow.

If you wait for and try to recover lost packets, the quality of your VoIP calls is going to be very low.

Let’s look at TCP and UDP in more detail.

UDP – User Datagram Protocol

This protocol is one of the core members of the IP suite.

UDP is generally better for real-time and high-performance applications like VoIP, which can’t afford retransmission delays. With UDP, there are no retransmission delays.

Here are some of the factors that make UDP ideal for VoIP:

• Connectionless — Avoids the overhead associated with establishing a 3-way handshake.
• No retransmission delays — If packets are lost, TCP will try to retransmit and recover lost packets, causing delays. This is not the case with UDP.
• Speed — UDP is faster, simpler, and more efficient than TCP.

However, UDP also has some downsides compared to TCP:

• No guaranteed ordering of packets — VoIP audio might be transmitted in a slightly different order than how it was sent.
• No protection against duplicate packets.

In some cases, these disadvantages can lead to jumbled audio.

However, UDP is still always recommended for VoIP calls.

TCP – Transmission Control Protocol

This protocol is one of the most commonly used protocols within the IP suite because it ensures the integrity of end-to-end data delivery over a network.

Here is a quick overview of the Transmission Control Protocol:

• Connection-oriented
• Good failure recovery
• High error rate handling and error-checking
• Sequencing – packets arrive in order at the receiver
• Relatively slower than UDP.

TCP is connection-oriented, which means that a connection must be established before data transmission takes place. The connection must also be closed after transmitting the voice packets. This comes with high overhead.

It also provides extensive error-checking mechanisms. If packets are lost, TCP will try to recover and retransmit those packets.

Your VoIP lines will become garbled due to packets trying to recover themselves, making it difficult to make sense of conversations.

TCP is ideal for applications like peer-to-peer file transfer, secure shell, and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), for example. But, it’s actually harmful to low-latency connections like VoIP.

TCP versus UDP: What Do VoIP Experts Recommend?

As a network administrator or VoIP engineer, you’ll want to remember that UDP is ideal for VoIP and SIP connections.

Using UDP will help improve call quality significantly. It will also help with device registration. If you’re trying to register lots of VoIP devices on your network, TCP will slow down your servers.

To learn more about using the differences between TCP and UDP and which is better for VoIP, speak with one of our telecom experts.

Voice over IP or VoIP has been a vital business communications tool for many years.

While the technology is still developing, a large percentage of organizations around the world have already adopted it. VoIP has many benefits, including cost savings, scalability, and global accessibility.

However, some countries have banned VoIP, including the UAE and other Middle Eastern countries. Why? Let’s take a look.

Which Countries Have Banned VoIP?

Currently, there are around 20 countries that regulate or block VoIP calls. Here is a list of those countries, along with more details about VoIP restrictions in each country.

Why is VoIP Banned in Some Countries?

Countries around the world block or restrict VoIP calls for several reasons.

The first reason to block VoIP calling is to preserve government profits. Various state-owned telecom monopolies worldwide — especially in the Middle East — rely on international calling and voice communications as a major source of revenue. Large revenue streams would dry up if these countries allowed VoIP.

Security and privacy are additional reasons for countries blocking VoIP. Some countries claim that their VoIP bans serve to protect society from negative influences that could harm the public interest. Others block the technology for security reasons during times of political turmoil and to prevent cheating.

Reasons VoIP is Blocked in Dubai and Kuwait

UAE is an expat-majority country. Many people in the country want to call their loved ones back home and thus require international calling services. However, the country has two government-owned monopolies – Du and Etisalat. Both operators take measures to ensure VoIP does not endanger their revenues.

Kuwait has a similar situation where local authorities look to preserve their revenues derived from voice communications. If they allowed VoIP in Kuwait, they would lose a significant source of revenue.

How are VoIP Bans Affecting People?

VoIP bans are nothing new. In fact, they started years back in 1999, around the time the technology started becoming popular. The effects of these bans can be significant.

For example, many people living abroad cannot communicate with their families back home. The exorbitant international calling rates imposed by monopolies prevent people from calling their families.

As a result, people are growing more frustrated and sharing those frustrations online.

Looking Forward

Local and regional telecom operators want to preserve their profits. It’s understandable. But residents in many countries have called to end VoIP bans.

So, VoIP laws might change around the world. There have been ongoing negotiations between big tech companies and some of the countries blocking VoIP.

For example, Microsoft and Apple are negotiating with countries to repeal their bans on Skype and FaceTime. If these negotiations go well, perhaps the countries will also start to allow businesses to use VoIP. But for now, the technology remains banned in some countries.

VoIP Alternatives for Blocked Countries

You can use three major alternatives to VoIP in countries where restrictions apply. These three methods — VPN, local access numbers, and international callback — all offer significant cost savings compared to using services from telecom monopolies.

However, governments and ISPs in those countries know of the methods used to bypass their restrictions. While these VoIP alternatives may achieve their purpose, authorities may consider them illegal.

So, even though an alternative may work for a given time, it may soon incur restrictions or legal repercussions.

1. VPN Tunnel

A VPN tunnel is the first VoIP alternative for countries with VoIP restrictions. Users will simply connect to a VPN that encrypts their traffic and hides their IP addresses. They’ll be able to access VoIP software to make and receive calls.

2. Local Access Number

The second major VoIP alternative is using a local access number to dial out. Your service provider would offer you a local or freephone number that you could call, enter a PIN, and dial the number you want to reach.

3. International Callback

Finally, an international callback solution acts as another strong alternative to VoIP in countries with VoIP bans.

Businesses in restricted countries would dial a trigger number, hang up the call, and then receive a callback. Upon receiving the callback, they would enter the destination number to call and connect.

How United World Telecom Can Help

At United World Telecom, we provide VoIP solutions and alternatives to VoIP that work well in blocked countries. To learn more, contact us and chat with our experts online!

A system outage or any type of downtime can significantly impact your company’s ability to close sales or deliver customer support. This may result in a loss of business continuity and revenue. So, maintaining a cloud phone system with a high VoIP uptime and network redundancy is essential to your business’ ability to function.

Are VoIP Systems Reliable? Why VoIP Uptime is Important

Since a redundant architecture is critical to business operations, how reliable are cloud-based communications?

You may be surprised to hear that VoIP networks are more consistent than the wired setups of the PSTN. Landlines are susceptible to power outages, severe weather disruptions, and phone line damage – causing lengthy downtimes. This is because landlines have a single point of failure, meaning your entire system stops working when it fails.

IP telephony eliminates wired setups. Instead, all you need to get started is a stable internet connection. And even if your internet goes out, you can simply forward calls to another destination. So, cloud-based systems continue working during power outages, inclement weather, and more – making them more reliable than traditional phones.

While hosted solutions are certainly more trustworthy than landlines, it’s still critical to consider a provider’s VoIP uptime. Without a high uptime guarantee from your provider, you’re at risk of serious downtime. And downtime means tough consequences such as losing customers, profits, productivity, and more.

What Exactly is VoIP Uptime?

In other words, it’s a metric used to determine the provider’s quality of service, performance, and reliability. In contrast, “downtime” indicates the time a service spends offline, out of operation, or “down.”

You can usually find uptimes listed on your provider’s website, in their Service Level Agreement (SLA), or by contacting them directly. To determine VoIP uptime, most providers either use a monitoring service or measure it themselves using simple math.

It’s essential to confirm that your provider includes both scheduled (maintenance, upgrades, etc.) and unplanned (disasters, power outages, etc.) downtimes in their assessments. This way, you know their uptime is accurate.

What Does 99.99% Mean?

Many cloud providers use percentages to communicate their VoIP uptime to customers. These percentages typically start at 99% and go up from there. However, providers can’t guarantee true 100% uptime. This is because networks are susceptible to damage from natural disasters, cyberattacks, and other unforeseen technical issues that cause service interruptions.

Now, you’re probably thinking – If I can’t have 100% uptime, 99% is exceptional. However, while 99% is undoubtedly better than 75% uptime, it can still yield substantial downtime for your business.

In fact, every “9” in an uptime guarantee is significant. It lets you know how much downtime to expect during a given year. For example, 99% uptime is equivalent to 3.65 days of downtime per year. Whereas 99.99% (also known as “four nines”) is only 52.60 minutes of annual downtime.

Here’s a table listing the range of VoIP uptime percentages and how much downtime you should expect with each:

How Do Providers Ensure 99.99% VoIP Uptime?

It’s important to understand how providers ensure reliability and guarantee 99.99% availability. This way, you know exactly what to look for when choosing a provider.

• Global Points of Presence (POPs)

Having several global points of presence allows providers to establish a high availability service. If one server fails, providers can redirect traffic or fall back on a different POP. So, you never experience downtime if your provider experiences an outage.

For example, if your provider’s Seattle-based POP failed, they could instantly route call traffic from the Seattle server location to another US-based POP.

• VoIP Security

While VoIP is fairly secure as is, your provider might face security risks like Denial of Service (DOS) that compromise their system and lead to downtime. So, it’s necessary to look for a trustworthy provider that meets the minimum security requirements for your specific communication and industry needs.

Search for providers with voice encryption security like Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP) and those with regular system security checks and firewalls. Providers with these security practices are more likely to deliver a consistent and secure business phone system with a high VoIP uptime.

• Networks of International Carriers

Selecting a provider that partners with multiple international carriers yields similar benefits, as discussed in the POP section. Working with numerous global carriers allows providers to reroute calls seamlessly to alternate destinations if one carrier fails. So, your provider (and your business) never experience prolonged outages or downtime. This helps providers build a more reliable and redundant service with high availability.

What Uptime Guarantee is Right For Your Business?

The answer to this question depends entirely on your business operations, communication setup, and service demands. 99.999% uptime is the industry gold standard – as it only allows about 5 mins of downtime per year.

But when determining the right uptime for your business, it’s helpful to ask yourself:

• How integral is your cloud phone system to your critical, everyday operations?
• How much downtime can your business afford?

Then, based on your responses, select a provider with your preferred VoIP uptime guarantee.

Best Practices for Developing a System with High VoIP Uptime

While high availability falls mainly on your provider, it’s still up to you to build a redundant system and minimize downtime for your business and customers. Let’s review the best practices for developing a system with high uptime.

1. Carefully select your provider

Selecting a trustworthy provider with the right VoIP uptime for your business is crucial to developing a consistent network. When researching cloud telephony providers, evaluate the following factors:

• • Availability guarantees
  • Redundancy methods (multiple POPs and carriers)
  • VoIP security measures (voice encryption, firewalls, regular security checks)
  • Disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

2. Double-check Service Level Agreements (SLA)

Many providers list their uptimes on their websites, which may not always be accurate. So, it’s important to double-check a provider’s service level agreement. This document will list their true uptime percentage and permitted downtimes. The SLA may also list terms and conditions for what happens if their actual uptime dips below their guarantee.

3. Monitor your system

Regularly monitoring your VoIP system allows you to track any network issues causing interruptions. Simply start by integrating an open-source or paid monitoring service into your existing setup. Then, you’ll be able to quickly identify and troubleshoot your VoIP system.

4. Implement failover strategies

With failover strategies in place, you’ll build your network’s redundancy. Even if your business experiences outages or crises, your system will continue to work with failover methods. Consider the following:

• • Use failover forwarding to route calls to alternate locations if the first destination is unavailable
  • Set up a backup or alternate internet connection
  • Opt for hardware that is simple to repair or includes a warranty
  • Disperse your teams, servers, and other systems across multiple geographical locations
  • Backup all mission-critical data, documents, applications, and so on
  • Create an in-depth disaster recovery plan and use it to train your teams.

Get High VoIP Uptime and Consistent Service with United World Telecom

Through a highly redundant global network, United World Telecom offers 99.999% VoIP uptime to users. We deliver high-quality telephony solutions with high availability as we have built long-term relationships with multiple Tier-1 global carriers. Additionally, we have several international POPs and decades of experience in telecommunications.

To learn more about our redundancy measures and if we are the right provider for you, speak with our dedicated telecom experts. Call us at +1 (561) 908-6171 or chat with us online today!

Good call quality is essential when communicating with customers and prospects. This is because it’s a first (and rather important) impression of your business and its reliability. 40% of customers stated they stopped doing business with a company due to poor customer service, and this includes a bad caller experience.

Part of customer service is being able to communicate on the phone without any hiccups or interruptions like muffled audio or dropped calls. So, how can you achieve the best VoIP call quality for your business? Let’s take a look!

Improving Call Quality for Your VoIP Phone System

VoIP providers exist in abundance these days. Some are fly-by-night using least-cost routing (LCR) with low-quality termination. Others offer expensive plans with limited global coverage and no redundancy.

Along with low-quality cloud phone service providers, many factors affect good VoIP call quality. Part of improving voice quality over your phone system is correctly identifying the issues and resolving them.

Common VoIP Issues

In order to improve VoIP call quality, you need to be aware of the different issues affecting voice quality. These are the most common voice over IP issues that you’ll need to troubleshoot:

• Inability to make calls from a device
• Dropped calls
• No sound
• Jitter
• Echo or delays
• Broken or muffled audio
• Latency
• Packet loss

It is crucial to identify what VoIP problem your system faces. It helps you take the right course of action to improve your network’s functionality. Finding a high-quality VoIP phone service provider can take care of most of these issues. That aside, there are a few tweaks you can make to your system on your own. Here is a VoIP troubleshooting guide to get you started.

How to Achieve Best VoIP Call Quality?

Take these steps to achieve good VoIP call quality for your cloud phone system:

1. Measure your VoIP call quality
2. Ensure you have the right equipment
3. Troubleshoot VoIP quality issues
4. Disable SIP ALG
5. Troubleshooting with VoIP QoS
6. Switch to a new provider

1. Measure Your VoIP Call Quality

It is vital to constantly monitor and measure VoIP call quality. Mean Opinion Score (MOS) measures VoIP quality by scoring a call from 1 (bad VoIP quality) to 5 (excellent VoIP quality). A good VoIP call quality MOS score falls between 3.5-4.2.

Here’s an example of what a MOS score chart looks like:

Test and measure call quality by monitoring jitter, latency, and packet loss. Additionally, call detail records and activity reports will help you identify where your call quality might be lacking. Then, you can determine how to resolve the issue.

2. Ensure You Have the Right Equipment

Purchase the right equipment to support your call volume and agent requirements. Here is a list of equipment needed for VoIP:

• VoIP (hard phones or softphones)
• Computers or laptops
• VoIP phone service
• Headsets with a microphone and noise-canceling technology
• High-speed and reliable data that meets essential VoIP bandwidth requirements

If you are a United World Telecom customer, you can work closely with our telecom experts to understand the equipment needed for your specific phone system. Chat with us online!

3. Troubleshoot VoIP Quality Issues

Besides finding the necessary equipment, it is crucial to test your VoIP phone system periodically. Here are some ways to troubleshoot VoIP call quality issues on your own:

1. Check your internet speed
2. Review network and equipment configuration
3. Identify and resolve jitter, latency, and packet loss issues
4. Check cables connecting devices and replace faulty wiring
5. Invest in good headsets
6. Avoid hubs on your local access network (LAN)

If you still suffer from low or bad call quality after trying these troubleshooting methods, then the problem may lie in your VoIP service.

4. Disable SIP ALG

Most internet routers come with the SIP ALG feature activated. SIP ALG — also known as Application Layer Gateway — prevents problems caused by a router’s firewall. It does so by monitoring and modifying VoIP traffic, as needed, to improve connectivity.

However, the downside is that VoIP traffic (voice data packets) can get lost due to router firewalls when transferred between the phone and the VoIP provider. This can lead to:

• One-way audio
• Phone not ringing for incoming calls
• Calls sent to voicemail directly
• Dropped calls

So, if your VoIP issues persist after trying these troubleshooting methods, you may need to check and disable SIP ALG.

Disabling SIP ALG depends on the type of modem you use. For most routers:

• Log into your router’s control panel.
• Navigate to Advanced or Security settings.
• Locate SIP, ALG, or Firewall settings (depends on your router’s set-up).
• Uncheck the SIP or ALG box.
• Save and reboot/restart your router.

If router settings are not clear, reach out to your internet provider for help.

5. Troubleshooting with VoIP QoS

VoIP Quality of Service (QoS) is the process of addressing and fixing voice quality issues. QoS prioritizes network traffic passing through a router. The end goal is to offer users acceptable-to-good service.

Routers handle data (and voice) packets on a ‘first in, first out’ basis. This way, all traffic on every device within your network is considered a priority. When too many people use the internet simultaneously, these packets end up waiting in long queues. This means, your call quality competes with other internet traffic on your network — leading to low voice quality.

QoS balances out bandwidth distribution across different types of traffic and devices. This way, you can prioritize what traffic gets through sooner and hassle-free to achieve the best VoIP call quality.

Set up VoIP QoS by reaching out to your internet supplier, VoIP providers, and IT team. To learn more, check out our guide to VoIP QoS standards and requirements.

6. Switch to a New Provider

Finally, if the above methods don’t work, it might be time to find a new provider to meet your business’ exact needs. Sometimes, no matter how you try to improve your call quality, the problem may lie in the phone system itself. Research different cloud phone service providers to understand how their system and phone network works. Consult with telecom experts to find the right solution for your business communication needs.

Resolving VoIP Call Quality Issues

Achieve the best VoIP call quality for your business by trying these different troubleshooting methods. And if those don’t do the trick, reach out to your VoIP provider.

Speak with our telecom experts to understand how we can help you achieve good VoIP call quality for your business. Call us at 1 (877) 898 8646 or chat with us online!