Good call quality is crucial for any business relying on VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology. Bad call quality can lead to frustration, misunderstandings, and lost business opportunities. This article will explore possible causes of bad call quality and provide steps to improve it.
Interpreting Call Error Codes
On WebApp
If you’re having issues with call quality during a call, you’ll likely see an error code at the top of your HighLevel dashboard. You can view the meaning of each error code here.
The most common errors are:
high-rtt – Round-trip-time (RTT) is the network’s latency measure. Higher latency can result in perceptible delays in audio.
high-jitter – Jitter is the measure of variability at which packets arrive at the SDK sensors. High jitter can result in audio quality problems on the call, such as crackling and choppy audio.
high-packet-loss – Packet loss is measured as the percentage of packets sent but not received at the SDK sensors. High packet loss can result in choppy audio or a dropped call.
On Mobile App
high-rtt: We detect high round-trip time on this network. You might experience perceptible delays.
low-mos: The call quality on this network might be affected.
high-jitter: We detect high jitter on this network. You could experience choppy audio or crackling noises.
high-packet-loss: We detect high jitter on this network. You could experience choppy audio or crackling noises.
In our experience, in most cases, the reason for bad call quality is a bad internet connection or a bad router.
Step 1 – Check the quality of your internet connection
VoIP breaks audio data into small chunks called packets to transfer them over the internet. This means a bad internet connection or a router might affect your audio quality.
Please head over to https://speed.cloudflare.com/ and do a test.
It is recommended to have at least a 50MBPS uplink/downlink connection with a jitter of less than 10ms and Ping of less than 40ms. If you have an inferior connection to the mentioned specs, you may need to upgrade your internet or router.
Step 2 – Check VoIP Compatibility
You can check the VoIP compatibility of your internet connection by heading over to – https://test.webrtc.org/
If you see any warnings (like in the example above), you may need to upgrade your internet, router, or computer to improve your call quality.
Step 3 – Check your Computer (or mobile) hardware
VoIP connections require your computer to perform heavy computations; therefore, if you are using an old machine, it is expected to have problems with VoIP call quality.