Though more and more people are using Voice over Internet Protocol, the burgeoning industry still is being outperformed by traditional wireline phone services in terms of audio clarity and reliability, a new study shows.

 

Verizon and AT&T (News - Alert) lost about 10 percent of their fixed line residential accounts, according to the study from Keynote Competitive Research – a loss that was spurred, in part, by the emergence of VoIP services, which saw a 75 percent growth rate.

 

Yet it isn’t clear whether VoIP services, which send audio packets through the Internet and are cheaper than traditional systems, will retain those new customers, according to Ben Rushlo, senior manager with Keynote’s competitive research group. The company also has a so-called “Voice Perspective for Service Providers” service, which involves voice quality monitoring.

 

“The service level performance of traditional wireline voice service continues to outperform the VoIP competition,” Rushlo said. “Cable companies using managed networks are rapidly closing the gap and will continue to make this an exciting market to watch.”

 

Keynote’s study compares the relative performance over a single month of a local wireline service (AT&T) to seven broadband VoIP providers (AT&T CallVantage, EarthLink trueVoice, Lingo, Packet8, Verizon VoiceWing (News - Alert), Vonage, and Vonics Digital), and two cable voice service providers (Time Warner Digital Phone and Comcast Digital Voice), from calls made from residential locations in New York and San Francisco.

According to Keynote’s study, service quality varies widely among VoIP providers. The study found that consumers are more likely to experience “merely tolerable,” rather than “completely satisfactory” audio delay on VoIP calls.

 

One VoIP provider required six seconds more than other VoIP providers to connect calls after dialing, the study found, and there were large quality gaps between VoIP providers on unmanaged networks and other service providers.

 

According to Keynote, the findings are important for VoIP providers facing market pressure to prevent high rates of customer attrition.