High Definition Audio - Another Cool VoIP Feature

High Definition Audio - Another Cool VoIP Feature

If you’ve been using VoIP for a while, the features won’t seem so cool, but if they came to you initially as a pleasant surprise, then you’ll know why I’m writing these articles. Millennials won’t find VoIP cool, since they’ve long moved on to more engaging applications, and probably have very little legacy experience to compare this against. Not to mention that pretty much any form of telephony is dull for them. Smart phones have changed the way young people communicate, and their preferred mode these days tends to be non-verbal. That’s another topic, and suffice it to say that “smart phone” is a misleading moniker for Millennials.

Many or even most of our readers here are not Millennials, and that certainly holds true from SMBs. Legacy telephony is still the norm, which means you’re using POTS – plain old telephony service – and the enhanced features I’ve been writing about lately for VoIP may well be news to you. Like anything else, we know what we know, and there are lots of reasons why we don’t always look beyond this, especially if the “known knowns” are still working.

The key message here is that my research consistently shows that SMBs will continue using legacy telephony as long as it continues to function. Despite the fact that VoIP has many obvious advantages, SMBs like staying in their comfort zone and are somewhat reluctant to try new technologies.

Once you get past this, however, the “hidden value” I’ve been talking about starts to become interesting, and from there, VoIP’s features can be seen as pretty cool. The main factor that makes VoIP cool is comparing the new to the old. The new can mean doing brand new things, or doing old things in a better way. In either case, VoIP has the ability to elevate telephony from a utility service to an innovative driver of productivity. This may seem like a big leap, but it really isn’t, and here’s another example to show what I’m getting at.

How HD Makes Voice Better

When VoIP first came out, one of the biggest push-backs was voice quality. Back then, the PSTN was all we had, but it truly was the gold standard for a service that worked virtually 100% of the time and always sounded great. That consistency has long been the backbone of the legacy value proposition, and the advent of cell phones only served to reinforce that.

As much as mobile telephony has become ubiquitous, the audio experience is vastly inferior to TDM, but subscribers seemingly accept this because they value the convenience of mobility over quality. This too, is a topic for another column, but the main point is that we have long viewed TDM at the apex of voice quality.

There is a lot of truth to that notion, but you may be surprised to know that VoIP is actually engineered to a higher audio standard than TDM. The reason why you’ve never experienced this has to do with your network and broadband connection – not the service itself. When VoIP was initially experienced on dial up service or early generations of broadband, the quality was terrible, and the stigma has unfairly remained with VoIP.

Today’s networks are much closer to the environment envisioned by VoIP’s pioneers, and when you have end-to-end IP, the improvement in audio quality is evident. The difference is similar to HD television – when you experience this for the first time, it’s difficult to go back to conventional TV. As much as you’re accustomed to how wireline voice sounds today, once you understand that telephony can actually sound better, another layer of VoIP’s hidden value is revealed.

Conclusion

Experiencing HD voice for everyday, internal calls is a little bit cool, but where it really shines is for customer-facing calls. Imagine how this can make this makes customers feel when calling in for technical support. Think about how much better calls will sound when trying to close a deal or performing a demo. Then consider how conference calls will become more engaging, or how training calls will be more effective.

We routinely take audio quality for granted, but until you experience HD, it may not occur to you that there could be something better – especially if it’s VoIP-based. That’s the myth I’m trying to dispel here, and hopefully enrich the value you expect from VoIP.

To be fair, HD is not a simple matter of flipping a switch with your VoIP provider – the phone system must be able to support HD as well. Not all IP phones are HD-enabled, but this is fast becoming the norm. In the near term, then, if you’re considering VoIP and want HD, just be sure your phone vendor can support it, and from there, your calls will sound better than ever before.

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