Keynote announces the results of its Industry Study Series of Voice Service Providers. The study looked at reliability and performance of leading VoIP, PacketCable and local wireline services.

Keynote’s competitive research study provides valuable data and insight that help VoIP providers of both managed networks and unmanaged networks overcome the quality barriers separating them from traditional local wireline phone service. The study compares the relative performance over a single month of a local wireline service (AT&T) with seven broadband VoIP providers (AT&T CallVantage, EarthLink trueVoice, Lingo, Packet8, Verizon VoiceWing, Vonage, and Vonics Digital) and two cable voice service providers (Time Warner Digital Phone and Comcast Digital Voice) from calls made from residential locations in New York and San Francisco.

While VoIP’s market share continues to grow, a recent study* showed that the number of traditional fixed line customers continued to drop sharply during 2007 with Verizon and AT&T both reporting declines of around 10% in residential wireline accounts. The growth in VoIP was a major contributor to this decline, in particular cable VoIP, with subscriber growth rates around 75%. VoIP reliability and audio clarity remain important factors that will influence the long-term customer retention potential of these new market players. “The service level performance of traditional wireline voice service continues to outperform the VoIP competition. Cable companies using managed networks are rapidly closing the gap and will continue to make this an exciting market to watch,” remarked Ben Rushlo, senior manager with Keynote’s competitive research group.

VoIP Service Provider Study, Wave 5 Competitive Research Results

Keynote’s study reveals that while most voice service offerings from the cable companies and VoIP service providers trail traditional wireline service in quality, some service providers are highly competitive.

Keynote’s new study of voice service quality uncovered the following observations:

• Consumers are more likely to experience merely tolerable, rather than completely satisfactory audio delay on VoIP calls.
• One VoIP service provider studied had no calls measuring a MOS of 4.0 or better, a key threshold for end user satisfaction; the best a consumer on this service can hope for is merely tolerable sounding audio.
• One VoIP provider experienced audio delay of more than 150 ms for every call placed, increasing the likelihood of conversational disruption for end users.
• One VoIP provider required six seconds more than other VoIP providers to connect calls after dialing.
• There were large quality gaps between VoIP providers on unmanaged networks and other service providers.

These findings are of great significance to VoIP providers who are under increasing market pressure to understand and prevent high rates of customer attrition and churn in a rapidly changing market.