Poor Mobile Voice Quality? Don't Blame Your CarrierPoor Mobile Voice Quality? Don't Blame Your Carrier

Nearly 40 percent of 630 million mobile calls made last year didn't meet the industry's minimum standard for voice quality, according to a worldwide study from Ditech Networks.Ambient, or background, noise in callers' environments was identified as a problem in a good portion of the calls, the study found. Echo from handsets and voice-level mismatch (when a person seems to be speaking too softly or loudly) were also identified as quality compromisers.

Ken Croley, senior director of marketing for Ditech, told Computerworld that in some ways these findings have reassured carriers that they don't need to continue pouring dollars into network improvements. Ditech is a telecom equipment maker whose products are designed to eliminate many of the causes of poor voice quality.

?Even though these kinds of voice quality problems occur outside the carrier?s network, users still blame their carrier and drop their service," said Frost & Sullivan analyst J. Gerry Purdy, in a statement.

The study involved 16 mobile network carriers in 12 countries, including three unnamed carriers in the United States. Measurement equipment was installed on the carriers' networks and findings were compared to the International Telecommunication Union's voice quality standard.Computerworld