2014-04-07

Voice Assured Broadband

Well, BT are talking about launching a service called Voice Assured Broadband.

Can I be really really cynical and say that what this actually means is that they will no longer accept that a line with packet loss and latency is "broken, because VoIP does not work".

We have seen that they consider huge levels of loss like 3% as "acceptable" already, but one wonders how bad broadband will be allowed to get if they can dismiss all VoIP issues with "Should've got VABB service".

However, as long as they called the current service "best efforts" there cannot be anything better, can there?

3 comments:

  1. Any references? Perhaps just report drop-out on Skype or FaceTime video calls instead. I'd love to see BT claim that they don't support such mainstream offers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. To be fair, it appears to be a consultation for a proposed service.

      Delete
  2. On the bright side, it could potentially be useful - in the same way I'd suggested during the packet loss saga that perhaps the "guaranteed throughput" option might be useful: if you are paying BT for a contracted service of, say, 12 Mbps and only 11.6 Mbps of the traffic actually reaches the far end, that seems a nice clear-cut fault for them to admit and address. (Of course, "not a fault" was a particularly tough line for them to push once TSOps found it was the result of a faulty router linecard on the backbone and fixed it...) Likewise "Voice Assured Broadband": enable it on a line showing packet loss, report the packet loss as being a fault meaning VAB isn't actually working, and demand they get the service working as contracted.

    ReplyDelete

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