Dominic Norton, Sales Director at Spitfire Network Services, explores the crucial role of data networks in seamless IP telephony migration
In an era of ever-evolving communication technologies, transitioning from traditional analogue and digital telephony to IP telephony (VoIP) has become a pivotal shift for businesses and organisations.
As of 5th September 2023, Openreach’s National Stop Sell of ISDN digital and PSTN analogue telephone lines marked a significant milestone, accelerating the move toward IP-based communication. This change mandates that all new telephony services adopt an IP framework, while existing systems must embrace this technology by the end of 2025 to ensure uninterrupted service.
Embracing IP telephony involves more than just a mere switch of phone lines. The considerations and complexities lie in both the costs associated with upgrading traditional on-premise systems and the challenges of migrating to hosted cloud-based telephony services.
The fundamental requirement for a successful IP telephone system is a robust and suitable IP data network infrastructure that ensures seamless connectivity and impeccable call quality.
Navigating the complexities of IP telephony
In contrast to the simplicity of analogue and ISDN lines designed for voice, IP networks, internet circuits, and the internet itself cater primarily to data transmission. The sensitivity of VoIP to network quality cannot be understated; even a slight dip in network performance can adversely affect voice quality. Each IP telephone call consists of many tiny IP voice packets traversing an intricate path between your phone and the telephone networks. The degree of control and visibility over these networks directly impacts call quality.
One critical factor that often goes unnoticed is the possibility of standard broadband internet circuits (full fibre included!) being subjected to contention with other users. This congestion can significantly impact latency – the delay between transmitting and receiving data – and subsequently affect the quality of voice transmission.
Unlike dedicated or premium broadband circuits prioritising voice packets, standard broadband connections lack mechanisms to shield voice data from the potential congestion caused by other data traffic. As a result, a seemingly simple call can become a frustrating experience due to lags, interruptions, and compromised voice clarity.
The road to optimal voice quality
As the journey from your handset or app to the IP telephone system unfolds, the quality of your internet connection, therefore, emerges as a critical consideration. While internet access has proliferated widely, not all connections are created equal regarding VoIP suitability. Standard broadband circuits, often chosen for their affordability or general internet needs, may falter under the specific demands of VoIP, due to their variable performance and lack of prioritisation for voice packets.
However, there is good news for organisations seeking impeccable voice quality. Circuits tailored for VoIP, such as Dedicated Fibre Ethernet or premium broadband circuits equipped with performance service-level agreements (SLAs) or real-time Quality of Service (RTQoS), prioritise voice packets, ensuring that they traverse the network with minimal latency and interruption. These circuits adhere to the accepted industry standards of 150ms latency, less than 45ms jitter and sub 1% data packet loss to achieve good voice quality from ear-to-ear.
Achieving these performance benchmarks – 80ms latency one-way to the service provider – is essential and should be backed by an SLA for consistent results. While using a standard internet connection may seem convenient, the risk of performance fluctuations and voice quality drops are likely and should be a key consideration, especially for critical IP telephone calls.
Eliminating internet traversal for reliable VoIP
A direct, non-internet traversal connection to your IP telephony provider significantly enhances reliability. When your IP telephony provider also serves as your connectivity provider, they can offer VoIP-dedicated circuits or a wide-area network (WAN) connecting directly to the IP telephony service.
In essence, this approach creates a direct lane for your voice data, circumventing the potential challenges posed by using a public internet connection. This is especially crucial for maintaining consistent voice quality, as the route taken by the voice packets remains isolated from the unpredictable fluctuations that can occur on the open internet.
Simplifying multi-site connectivity
For enterprises operating across multiple sites, achieving dependable voice quality need not entail establishing separate connections for voice and data at each site. When configured with the correct local quality of service (QoS) configurations, both can be integrated over suitable performance SLA-backed circuits, such as Dedicated Fibre Ethernet. When combined within a WAN, the same connectivity efficiently serves data and VoIP requirements.
Prioritising quality
Beyond establishing robust connections, it is crucial to safeguard voice traffic as it traverses both local area networks (LANs) and wide-area network (WANs). Implementing quality of service (QoS) across networks where VoIP and data traffic intersect ensures consistent voice quality. Collaborating with your IP telephony, LAN and WAN providers to define these requirements is essential.
Ensuring reliability
The reliability of IP telephony solutions hinges on seamless connections between users, the IP telephone system, and telephone networks. The type and number of connections will depend on your chosen architecture. In critical telephony scenarios, establishing reliable and resilient connectivity becomes paramount, with enhanced repair time SLAs a sensible consideration.
Incorporating a secondary connection through a separate network can address local issues, alongside ensuring your IP telephony provider’s application has built-in resilience and multiple connections to telephone networks for comprehensive outage mitigation.
The key takeaways
Work with your provider to look at both telephony and connectivity solutions hand-in-hand. Using a provider capable of delivering both IP voice and data connectivity ensures elevated quality and support capabilities. This partner can expertly design a data connectivity solution that forms the bedrock of a successful migration to the realm of IP telephony.
Organisations can embrace the future of communication by prioritising robust connections, safeguarding voice traffic, and ensuring reliability.
