9. Voice Quality

To assess voice quality we polled the individuals we called in the course of our multi-week testing phase for their opinions.

All participants described the quality of calls made to other Skype users via Skype PDA within the company network as being good, or in some cases, very good. No difference was noticed versus the "classic" desktop PC Skypes with wire-connected headsets. A similar evaluation was given for Skype calls not located within the physical network. Most responses given here were "good".

Connections to fixed line and wireless networks received less favorable reviews, the responses varying between satisfactory voice quality to "good analog telephone quality". When using the system to call from the U.S. to Europe for example, it was nearly impossible to communicate due to echo. This was the case in connecting with both other Skype users and regular telephone connections.

Activating the Echo Cancellation function failed to achieve any noticeable improvement. The PDA and headset settings were not the cause of poor voice quality in this case, as the control call by Skype user echo123 (echo testing service) for detecting these types of configuration problems was not plagued by echo.

All in all we would rate the voice quality of Skype for Pocket PC in the configuration we tested as satisfactory to business-usable on a limited scale, depending on the usage environment.

Conclusion

Our Skype for Pocket PC operational trial revealed that a high-performing Pocket PC equipped with wireless functions can indeed be used as a device for Internet telephony. The voice quality obtainable is perfectly satisfactory for personal use, and the method offers the big advantage of the extremely low calling cost: frequent or long-distance callers will quickly notice the positive impact on their phone bills.

In a business environment, this solution is not yet mature, due to the limitations we described regarding voice quality for intercontinental calls, and the sometimes variable quality when calling fixed line and wireless numbers.

We also must not neglect to point out the biggest disadvantage of this IP telephony solution compared to a "classic" IP telephony solution via provider VoIP gateway - the system currently does not support mapping: the assigning of a telephone number to a Skype user's IP address. This means that Skype users cannot be called from fixed line or wireless networks, which is a deal-breaker for some.

The test revealed something else too: it is primarily because of applications like Skype that IP telephony is evolving from its stage of infancy. It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that IP-based telephony solutions such as Skype are set to become serious competitors for classic telephony solution providers over the medium term, as their pricing structures evolve and quality improves. Modern IP telephony technologies may toll the death bell of the communication dinosaurs much sooner than many pundits have predicted - if you listen closely, you can almost hear it starting to ring even now.