IP Voice: I Long for The Old Days of Copper

Voice communications is getting worse by the day. Back before say 1990 telecommunications used analog voice over copper lines. The Old Bell System, for better or worse really worried about voice quality and a voice communications was generally good, even to far away locations.

Then came digital voice. The two drivers were wireless and lower data rates and usage and also the introduction of IP communications. In the early 90s when I was at now Verizon Wireless, we moved to introduce digital and this meant voice codecs, which compressed voice. From 64,000 bps we went down to 4,000 to 9,000. A real drop. We did such things as MOS or mean objective scoring to show that it really was not that bad. It really was.

Then along came IP and we then put these codecs modified on IP nets. Again I did this in 1996 along with a company called VocalTec. I ran a network using IP and voice codecs. We actually got voice to work, in Poland and Russia. But our networks were fine tuned and dedicated. Others used the Internet, which along with the codecs made everyone sound like Donald Duck.

Then along came Customer Services out of India. Add to the IP problems and the codec problems the accent and language problems and you have what we have today.

A mess.

Most of the younger folks do not make phone calls. They have no knowledge of a great long distance call with a friend, talking as if you were having a truly private conversation. Today the quality, well stinks, yet we also have God knows how many people listening in on these conversations.

Technology is not always a great leap forward. We still buy hard copy books.