“Hello?”, “Can you hear me?”, “Can you hear me now?”, “Give me a sec, I’ll call you back”… I’m sure most of us can relate to these phrases and have probably said them ourselves more than once. The frustration we feel when we can’t seem to stay connected to the person on the other side of the line is real. And on many occasions, there’s an easy solution to our frustration. It could be simply restarting the router, using 5G instead of Wi-Fi, switching to a different app or even choosing to use good-old GSM calls.
That’s all fine when you’re talking with friends and family. In the real business world, however, we can’t be experimenting with different apps or networks. Imagine being on an important call with a potential customer or with your boss and they’re unable to hear you or connect with you. There’s a very high chance that you’ve lost that call completely!
What can we do to guarantee the best quality VoIP calls? We’ve prepared a short 4-point checklist to help you prepare your business for quality VoIP calls:
- Set up QoS on your router. QoS (Quality of Service) enables your router to prioritise voice traffic in your network. As a result, the quality of your calls will significantly improve as the voice packets are able to transfer in a continuous stream.
- Bandwidth. You need to ensure that your network has enough bandwidth to cater for your VoIP call needs. Minimum bandwidth requirements are 20Mb/s download speed, 10Mb/s upload speed, less than 80ms latency.
- Router Requirements. Invest in a business-grade router and have an IT professional configure it for you. Home-grade routers are not suitable for business use.
- Wi-Fi Signal & Access Points. It’s recommended that your Wi-Fi signal strength should be -60dBm or higher to avoid packet loss. An IT professional should test the signal throughout your office to ensure that your Wi-Fi signal is strong enough for VoIP calls to be made throughout.
- Get a professional. We all like to believe we know more about networking and Wi-Fi than we actually do. Leave the experiments for your home network and bring in the professionals to correctly configure your office network.
Follow these simple steps and you’ll see a huge improvement in the quality of your future VoIP calls. If you need help with getting started, reach out to our team and we’ll be happy to be of assistance.
