Abstract

Business activities need excellent voice communication quality to avoid misunderstandings between the parties. Currently voice communications is embedded in data communication and related to Internet connections. End devices include IP based telephones set and the ubiquitous smartphones that are now Internet connected as well. Smartphones are cellular based, but technological evolution and customer demand leads to Internet data services. Internet enables the change of communications from voice centric to data centric communications. Traditional analog voice communication is superseded by digital technique that resulted in digital voice. Internet enables the ease of connectivity of digital data. As digital voice is now data, Voice over IP (VOIP) can be part of data service in Internet. Voice can now be embedded in Internet based services. Businesses currently do not need separate voice and data network. The acceptance of technology depends on the quality of service perceived by the customers. In voice communications ITU issued has recommendation for telephony quality known MOS (Mean Opinion Service). It is interesting to have a simple method to measure MOS of voice communications. The MOS should provide an indication if the service is acceptable or inadequate for business use. The MOS indicator will be useful for business entities especially small and medium enterprise that are operating from premises with only cellular network as their Internet access choice. The ITU recommendation provides detailed variables to measure the MOS. This research determines equipment impairment factor that affects R factor that determine MOS based on data obtained from measurements.

Keywords

VOIP, MOS, Data Service, Impairment, voice centric