Audit: 39% of mobile calls don’t meet minimum voice-quality standard
-- Test & Measurement World, 2/6/2008 12:31:00 PM
Ditech Networks, a provider of voice quality solutions to the global communications industry, has announced the results of its worldwide voice-quality audit, which showed that an average of 39% of all mobile calls fall below the industry minimum standard for voice quality. The data was captured in the largest audit conducted in the mobile services industry to measure how mobile devices and the caller’s environment affect voice quality. Ditech collected and analyzed information obtained from more than 630 million live mobile calls in 16 different networks across 12 countries.
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Ditech’s audits quantified for the first time significant sources of subscriber dissatisfaction. The audits also demonstrated that some of the biggest and most urgent problems facing the worldwide mobile services industry are voice-quality impairments caused by the places where people make calls and by the wide variety of mobile devices like phones and headsets that people use. Industry research has shown that calls falling below the industry minimum for voice quality often lead to churn, which is when dissatisfaction is so strong that the subscriber terminates service.
“Mobile service is about making calls from almost anywhere, and users expect their carrier to deliver acceptable voice quality regardless of where the call is made or what device they’re using,” said J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., VP and chief analyst for mobile and wireless communications at Frost & Sullivan. “Even though these kinds of voice-quality problems occur outside the carrier’s network, users still blame their carrier and drop their service. By removing the effects of these external impairments, carriers can gain a strong competitive advantage.”
Ditech’s audits uncovered a number of facts about voice quality in the mobile services industry:
• In mature markets such as the US and Western Europe, 23% of all calls fall below the industry minimum.
• In rapid growth markets, such as the Middle East, India, and South America, 59% of all calls fall below the industry minimum.
• Ambient noise, or noise that originates in the caller’s environment and enters the device’s microphone, was rated “objectionable” on up to 50% of all calls in some regions.
• Acoustic echo, which is often caused by mobile handsets and headsets, was rated “objectionable” on up to 11% of all calls in some regions.
• Voice level mismatch, which makes it sound like a caller is speaking either too loudly or too softly, was rated “objectionable” on up to 28% of all calls in some regions.
“Until Ditech’s audits, mobile service providers only had data about network-induced voice quality problems, which are issues that originate within the network, or subjective information from consumer public opinion surveys,” said Todd Simpson, president and CEO of Ditech Networks. “When voice-quality impairments originating from the subscriber’s environment are added to impairments originating in the network, the communications industry finally has a complete and accurate picture of actual voice quality that is experienced by customers. Carriers now have actionable information for pinpointing the sources of voice-quality impairments, like ambient noise and echo.”
The audits were conducted using Experience Intelligence (EXi), a technology developed by Ditech that quantifies the impact of voice-quality impairments caused by the places where people make calls, codec impairments, and mobile devices like phones and headsets. EXi is based on the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) G.107 E-Model, a widely used industry standard, and the technology has been utilized in the communications industry as a complement to existing voice-quality test and measurement solutions.
The audit data was used to derive an R-Factor, which is a 1-100 (best) rating system developed by the ITU to assess customer satisfaction with voice quality. The R-Factor was converted to a Mean Opinion Score (MOS), which is widely used in the mobile services industry to rate voice quality on a scale of 1 to 5 (best.) The ITU has set the minimum level of acceptable voice quality at R-Factor 50, or MOS 2.5. Voice quality that is rated below these minimums is considered unacceptable.
In September 2007, Ditech released a report on the global economic impact of dissatisfaction with mobile call quality and found that the communications industry is already feeling the pinch. Poor voice quality is believed to have caused more than 66,583,174 mobile subscribers to leave their service provider during 2007, ultimately costing the global mobile services industry approximately $23.6 billion.
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