Agree with Burble on our need for reliability. The other problem for our Community Crumblies is that for decades we have enjoyed crystal clear comms via our ancient copper. Now younger relatives are going VOIP their calls sometimes sound as if they are via outer space, with breaks (maybe buffering) and poor audio quality even when using hearing aids for those who need them. I certainly regard this audio degradation as a backward step.

Either that or now realised they have to pay for DDOS protection where they've been lucky and escaped notice until recently

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

for decades we have enjoyed crystal clear comms via our ancient copper.

You've not used my old openreach line, voice quality was always poor, certainly not "crystal clear". Those whom call into the radio stations using a traditional landline are always obvious due to the limited bandwidth.

VoIP should not be sounding as if from outer space, especially on a normal domestic internet connection.

VoIP services should sound dramatically better, possible to play good classical music, not dumbed down to Alexander Graham Bell's telephone.

Interesting. Since 2004 I occasionally contribute to local BBC radio and either attended the studio for live transmission or the interviewer came out with a recorder. They did not like the phone except in emergency. With new technology I think a change was on the way but certainly the pandemic speeded this up.

Last year I was interviewed over Skype, this being the choice of the BBC sound engineer although I told them our landline was very clear. Absolute nightmare -- there was a 1.5 second lag on the line making the flow of question/answer almost impossible. I was tempted to use R/T procedure "over" after each answer. This year's interview over our landline to same studio was perfect. Our BB is consistently 35-37MB and regular Facetime to the next room, Canada or Australia is excellent.

Not sure that many call into the radio on landline, surely most people are mobile these days and many haven't a landline at all? I have checked with a BBC contact and he says landlines are fine for voice interview, mobiles especially in vehicles can be tricky, or someone wandering around the garden on a cordless is the bane of the gardening programmes!

FaceTime is VoIP just a “walled garden” approach with tightly controlled access and high quality codecs and as we know available only to Apple devices. Although I believe that will change with the new iOS release in a few weeks...

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

Last year I was interviewed over Skype, this being the choice of the BBC sound engineer although I told them our landline was very clear. Absolute nightmare -- there was a 1.5 second lag on the line making the flow of question/answer almost impossible.

Skype is an essentially free system which can suffer from congestion, a downside of the free nature, and the volume of users. It is a propriatory form of VoIP that can't interoperate with systems based on standards; this is because it was early.

for quality voice, your broadband download speed is usually not an issue, if your uplink is slow (under 2 Mbps) then it is advised to ask other users to stop using whilst you are on a call.

Some radio stations were using WhatsApp and Facetime Audio to call in, the broadcast output quality of these calls was dramatically clearer than any analogue telephone line.

The reason it sounds better is that old copper phone lines were designed for voice and apparently only carries 8 kHz. A VoIP connection over the internet can choose different codecs starting at 8 kHz upto 44 kHz which would be CD quality.

In reply to a post by aquiss:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Wonder who the other SIP providers are…?

VoIP Unlimited is another we have come across.

Looks like a repeat strike by the same gang.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/10/ddos-a...

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Looks like a repeat strike by the same gang.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/10/ddos-a...

Though for clarity, it appears Voipfone were not targeted this time or have put measures into place to protect themselves further.

Old copper lines - or POTS audio range was actually 300Hz to 3.4KHz or thereabouts - the 8KHz would be the sample rate if sampled/digitised using the Nyquist rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_rate

Basically you need to sample at twice the highest audio frequency so no aliasing (distortion) occurs. Whilst a CD sample rate is 44.1KHz - the highest audio frequency that can be conveyed is 22.05KHz.

I think if I remeber back to by telecomms theory the male voice has a fundamental frequency around 100Hz and females 200Hz - yes oddly below the POTS range - however the majority of recognisable speach is contained in the harmonics hence you can still be understood - just!