Reply by from Community Data Solutions on Sunday, 12 February, 2012 - 18:43

We use a number of audio conferencing tools including Skype. I would suggest the problem doesn't lie with Skype, but rather with either your a) Internet connection (speed and latency) or b) Inbuilt speakers or microphone. Purchasing a good quality headset can make a large difference to eliminate background noise and improve audio quality.

Reply by Patrick from Community How on Friday, 17 February, 2012 - 13:52

It does depend how many people are using the connection. The biggest problem with any voice/video over the Internet is the speed of your Internet connection. Whilst most Australians enjoy very fast download speeds, upload speeds, which are critical for voice/video conferencing have not kept pace (blame copper wire and the laws of physics). I would suggest finding a local IT consultant who has experience with VOIP & Skype and requesting the investigate your office to identify if it can be improved. In my office one of the most used phrases during a phone conference is "Whoever is downloading or watching youtube please stop it we can't hear the other guys". So a quick fix might be to ensure that no one is doing any intensive downloading at the same time that will quickly saturate your Internet connection.

Reply by Colin Thompson from TechBrain on Friday, 17 February, 2012 - 21:31

I would agree with both answers here to some degree. You can just use your iphone headset to save on the cost of a headset but certainly agree it will make a huge difference. At the same time, it will make no difference if your bandwidth is poor or poorly managed. You can buy a Cisco 800 series router from donortech that will do QoS for $70 - $130. It will cost you a bit for an Engineer to configure the QoS etc (Perhaps $400-$500) but then it will provide a guarentee of service to your VOIP traffic. Even without a Cisco, many low end modem/routers provide QoS for VOIP right out of the box. Check out your existing product and see if you can configure any Quality of Service or Bandwidth guarentees.