VoIP lives down its past

Voice-over-IP (VoIP) has got over its early reputation for poor call quality, with 65 percent of users now satisfied or 'very satisfied' with the sound quality of their calls.

Early implementations were notorious for erratic sound quality, due partly to the narrow Internet bandwidths and partly to the fact that the web was not designed to deliver time-dependent data. But faster links and clever software have made web calls more viable.

Now only 29 percent of users say they are not satisfied with the quality, according to a survey by Continental Research .

Unsurprisingly, considering that pure VoIP calls are usually free, 86 percent said they were satisfied with the value for money. More than eight in 10 (84 per cent) said they were satisfied with the ease of use.

The survey consisted of face-to-face interviews with 2,107 people aged 16 or over; other data was collected from an online survey of 1,037 people. Just over half (56 per cent) of those who had used VoIP said they expected to make more use of it over the coming 12 months.

The report on the survey, Convergence Report Spring 20065, also showed how more people are accessing TV and radio using new media. It found that 12.4 percent of British people had listened to live radio over the internet and 7.7 percent had listened to downloaded programmes.

Just 3.6 percent had watched live TV over the internet, and 3.3 percent had watched a downloaded programme.

And there was bad news, on the face of it , for the many companies planning to capitalise on increasing bandwidths by delivering video online: only one in three of those surveyed said they were likely to use such a service in the next 12 months.

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