-- Six leading VoIP Providers and 2 Packet Cable Providers
Benchmarked Against Landline Telephony
-- Two VoIP Providers Lead in Audio Clarity
-- Study Shows Significant Room for Reliability Performance
Improvement
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 12, 2008--Keynote Competitive
Research, the industry analysis group of Keynote(R) Systems
(Nasdaq:KEYN), today announced the results of its latest VoIP Service
Provider Study, which evaluates how end users experience the
reliability and audio clarity of leading voice service providers. The
study compares the relative performance of AT&T landline service or
POTS (plain old telephone service) with six broadband VoIP providers
(AT&T CallVantage, EarthLink trueVoice, Lingo, Packet8, Verizon
VoiceWing and Vonage) and two cable voice service providers (Time
Warner Digital Phone and Comcast Digital Voice) for the month of
October, 2008 by collecting data from calls made from residential
locations in New York and San Francisco. Overall, reliability is
improving slightly, however audio quality is significantly different
from the previous study.
"We've been conducting VoIP studies for more than three years and
have seen significant trends develop, such as serious disparity in
reliability and audio performance between VoIP services on managed
networks and those that rely on existing broadband home network
connections," said Ken Harker, senior consultant at Keynote. "While
conditions are dramatically improved for Comcast Digital Voice and
Verizon VoiceWing customers, the best that other consumers can hope
for is merely tolerable audio quality."
Results Overview:
Reliability
Provider Reliability Points Rank
---------------------------------------------------------
AT&T Landline 996 1
---------------------------------------------------------
Time Warner Digital Phone 925 2
---------------------------------------------------------
Verizon VoiceWing 872 3
---------------------------------------------------------
Audio Quality
Provider Reliability Points Rank
-------------------------------------------------
Comcast Digital Voice 901 1
-------------------------------------------------
Verizon VoiceWing 609 2
-------------------------------------------------
AT&T Landline 506 3
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Read an abstract of Keynote's VoIP study online:
http://www.keynote.com/docs/kcr/Voice_W6_CIStudy.pdf
With analysts predicting strong growth in the market, it is
imperative for VoIP companies to perfect their offering now to capture
new users and satisfy existing customers. Consumers and commercial
customers will be looking to VoIP service as an opportunity to save
money in this economy. The VoIP services with the best end user
experience will be positioned to take advantage of current economic
pressures.
VoIP Service Provider Study, Wave 6 Competitive Results:
The Wave 6 VoIP Service Provider study evaluated traditional
landline service provider AT&T VoIP providers AT&T, CallVantage,
Lingo, Packet8, EarthLink, trueVoice, Verizon, VoiceWing and Vonage;
and cable voice services Comcast Digital Voice and Time Warner Digital
Phone. Keynote analyzed the audio quality and reliability, key
performance indicators that affect the end user experience across
these VoIP providers, as well as traditional phone service for
comparison.
Overall Best VoIP Service Providers
Keynote ranked VoIP Service Providers in two categories:
Reliability and Audio Quality. The Service Availability, Call
Completion, Average Answer Time, and Dropped Audio performance factors
all contribute to the Reliability ranking. This high-level ranking
identifies which voice service providers are providing the most
reliable end user experience. The Audio Quality ranking is computed as
an aggregate of the performance factors related to audio clarity and
audio delay. This high-level ranking identifies which service
providers are providing the most reliable and best sounding VoIP
service. Each ranking is computed based on 1000 total points available
as the best case, or winning result.
Reliability Overview
In Wave 6 of Keynote's VoIP Service Provider Study, Time Warner's
Digital Phone maintains its second place ranking behind landline
service, and the remaining providers have generally increased their
scores as compared to the Wave 5 study.
Audio Quality Overview
In Wave 4 and again in Wave 5, Keynote reported that the landline
service outperformed the competition when it comes to delivering great
sounding call audio with minimal delay. In Wave 6, we see digital
return to the top with Comcast and Verizon providing better audio
quality than landline.
General Observations
-- The best providers always deliver dial tone and connect the
call to the number dialed in a timely fashion.
-- Only one of the providers in the study failed to provide dial
tone 99.9% of the time or better.
-- All providers had very small percentages of calls with dropped
audio, but only two providers had zero calls with dropped
audio.
-- One VoIP provider required two seconds more than any other
voice provider to connect calls after dialing.
-- Most providers had slightly more audio delay and slightly
lower MOS in Wave 6 as compared to Wave 5.
-- Eight of the nine providers in the study had a better call
completion rate in Wave 6 than was evidenced in the Wave 5
results.
Methodology
To perform the study, Keynote uses its commercially available
Voice Perspective(R) product to conduct calls, and perform wave-form
analysis of the results. Each call includes the transmission of a
reference audio file specifically created with characteristics
appropriate to voice audio quality measurement.
Study Availability
An overview report, which reveals general industry trends and
highlights the performance of the best voice service providers, is
available for VoIP providers and enterprises choosing a VoIP service.
The report identifies general areas of challenges and opportunities
that have the maximum impact on customer experience.
Details of the report analyzing each of the nine service providers
and each of the ten performance factors in greater depth, with
analysis of the data across service providers, last-mile network
connections and geography, can also be obtained by contacting Keynote.
Armed with this intelligence, IT Managers can tune specific aspects of
their VoIP service to provide better performance to customers than
their competition.
In addition, Keynote can provide custom analysis to help align
operations teams with customer experience enhancement goals. To learn
more about Voice Perspective for Service Providers view:
www.keynote.com/products/voip_and_streaming/voip_quality/voice_
perspective_sp.html. (Due to its length, this URL may need to be
copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the
extra space if one exists.)
About Keynote Voice Perspective
Voice service providers can leverage the competitive insight
provided through Keynote's Voice Perspective(R) for Service Providers
for on-going real time monitoring of voice quality from representative
locations to improve their call performance in target markets.
Combining Keynote's voice monitoring services and competitive insights
with internal network monitoring tools will allow providers to adopt
an outbound focus and assure a quality experience for the end user.
Keynote can design an ongoing voice quality measurement and monitoring
implementation for multiple markets including multiple competitors.
Service providers can leverage Keynote's independent assessment to
align their resources and infrastructure investments with customer
acquisition and retention goals.
About Keynote
Keynote Systems (Nasdaq "KEYN") is the global leader in on-demand
test & measurement solutions for continuously improving the online
experience. For over a decade, Keynote has been providing measurement
data and testing capabilities that allow companies to understand and
improve their customers' online and mobile experience. Keynote has
four test and measurement businesses: Web performance, mobile quality,
streaming & VoIP, and customer experience/UX.
Known as The Mobile and Internet Performance Authority(TM),
Keynote has a market-leading infrastructure of 2,600 measurement
computers and mobile devices in over 240 locations around the world.
Keynote's 2,800 customers represent top Internet and mobile companies
including American Express, Dell, Disney, eBay, E*TRADE, Expedia,
Microsoft, SonyEricsson, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, Vodafone and
YouTube.
Keynote Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California
and can be reached at www.keynote.com or by phone in the U.S. at
1-800-KEYNOTE.
Keynote, The Internet Performance Authority and Perspective are
registered trademarks and The Mobile and Internet Performance
Authority are trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. (C) 2008 Keynote
Systems, Inc.
CONTACT: Citigate Cunningham
Leslie Johnson, 415-618-8740
ljohnson@citigatecunningham.com
or
Keynote Systems, Inc.
Dan Berkowitz, 650-403-3305
dberkowitz@keynote.com
SOURCE: Keynote Systems, Inc.