Why has Voice Quality never changed?

Blisterman

Just had an interesting (well, maybe not) thought.

In the past 20 years, every aspect of technology seems to have improved. TVs are bigger, with better picture. Internet speed is faster.

However, phone voice quality hasn't changed one bit. It's still worse that the lowest quality mp3s you can get.

Why is this? You'd think with 3g and mobile internet etc, they'd upgrade the quality of the line.

Doctor DooM

I would guess because it'd cost money. Eircom are not known to spend money unecessarily for no reason.

Anyway, I think it is a lil better than when I was a nipper..?

[edit]Sorry, didn't realise this was for mobiles...

I assume the networks want to keep their bandwidth for data access and to keep the maximum amount of slots free for the maximum amount of users. Increasing quality cuts the bandwidth of the carriers.

Gillo

Personally I've never noticed a problem with voice quality, unless I am in an area with bad coverage.

Speaking as someone who has sold mobiles for the past four years I've never had anyone complain aboutvsoice / sound quality unless there was a fault with the particular handset.

DMC

I'm pretty sure the OP is referring to the actual sound quality of the call, rather than actual clarity.

Its down to the low level frequencies being used on land lines, from 300 Hz to 4kHz, sometimes called 'Voice band', which is within the natural hearing band of humans. Broadband works by uses frequencies at higher end of the spectrum not reserved for voice calls. As for why mobiles have not brought it on another bit.... dunno.

towel401

voice quality is better on SIP phones. using the right codecs anyway. on a landline there is always whitenoise in the background. not so much with SIP. but when the network is saturated then it starts to go bad very fast. ISDN is quite good if you have a proper ISDN phone but also very expensive.

3G hasnt made voice calls sound taht much better. they probably want to save bandwidth but on a busy day they could switch people back to the much hated 'half rate' codec

godskitchen

There has not been a need to do so, Joe SixPack wouldnt know the difference anyway!

How many people can tell the difference between a 128k and lossless sound file............

I can and I hate using the phone network for important calls, once you have used a good quality VOIP service (with good mic and headphones/speakers) you wont want to go back!

I remember the first time I heard about VOIP was on the BBC, they had a guest on a show over the phone, I remember thinking "No way, this guy has to be in the studio". At the end of the segment that said if any of the viewers were wondering why the sound was so good it was because it was via VOIP.

No looking back now!

towel401

true. not skype though. i can always tell that skype sounds like ****. even if a thing is being redirected through skype it sounds muffled

godskitchen

towel401 wrote: »

true. not skype though. i can always tell that skype sounds like ****. even if a thing is being redirected through skype it sounds muffled

Thats probably the US government listening in, I don't understand why people still use skype. Its expensive to call the PSTN from and silly to call mobiles.

Voipbuster/Voipstunt work better for me.

Gekko

is there not technology like enhanced full rate (EFR) that has supposedly improved voice call quality during this time?

and has the situation not changed a whole lot because mobiles work using technology that hasn't changed - ie electromagnetic radio waves?

cgarvey

Blisterman wrote: »

However, phone voice quality hasn't changed one bit.

It's still quite poor, granted, but it has improved. On landlines, the use of fibre optics means no more 3-second delays. Local/trunk calls are of much higher quality (reliability and spectrum) than 20-ish years ago. Still, PSTN has limitations, and there's a whole lot of changes to happen before anything can be changed there (unlike, say, VoIP where codecs/firmware/transport can be tweaked easily).

In mobile, we have GSM (remember the good ole days of 088 analogue Eircell?). Even in GSM we've had some improvements (the battery hogging EFR springs to mind).

Still, it is quite poor, like you say. As is digital TV (most Sky channels seem poorer-quality to me than a good signal on the old Astra analogue system, thanks to compressing every last bit!). Digital audio (or video for that matter) downloads suffer the same problem.

godskitchen

cgarvey wrote: »

Still, it is quite poor, like you say. As is digital TV (most Sky channels seem poorer-quality to me than a good signal on the old Astra analogue system, thanks to compressing every last bit!). Digital audio (or video for that matter) downloads suffer the same problem.

I could not agree more if I tired, the problem is that Joe SixPack cant tell the difference, and while that is the case things wont change. I really dont think most people can see the difference in HD, they just get told its better by marketing people. There was a little thing on the internet of late that asked people to choose the higher mega pixel picture, they were all the same but no one could tell because they were told one was better.

People think LCD's are better than CRT's which of course they are not. Its all marketing.