Part 1-Here's an overview of the Keynote Systems VoIP Test
I've now had a chance to read and absorb the Overview of the Keynote Systems Competitive Intelligence for Consumer VoIP Service Providers study released yesterday.
The study used precise metrics to measure various call quality performance criterial on some 166,000 VoIP-incumbent phone company calls between New York and San Francisco. Testing period of five weeks included calls placed every 30 minutes, involving VoIP access providers AT&T CallVantage, Lingo, Packet8, SkypeOut, Verizon VoiceWing, Vonage, and Vonage Soft Phone.
In each city, there was a Responder with 12 PSTN phone lines dedicated to the study.
Both locations used six Calling Agents. These included three Business Class Carriers (UUNET T1, Sprint T1, and AT&T T1); a residential Cable Modem carrier (Time Warner Cable in New York, Comcast in San Francisco); one residential DSL carrier (SBC DSL in San Francisco, and Verizon DSL in New York), as well as one calling Agent attached to a PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) line.
To place VoIP calls on all seven VoIP service providers in each city, each Calling Agent was equipped with software and hardware phone adaptors.
What's really interesting was the methodology Keynote Systems used to rate each call. That's in Part 2.