VoIP Service Quality: Measuring and Evaluating Packet-Switched Voice

I found this book to be enormously useful in understanding the determinants of voice quality in live, packet-based networks - not just what matters in engineering laboratories. Its value goes beyond, that, though, because it helped me understand what the people who run telecom companies and their customers should be looking for in the transition from today's voice networks to those carrying voice over IP. Anyone who is interested in these topics should read this book. As more and more voice traffic is transmitted over packet-switched networks, the challenges to producing high-quality voice services at a low cost are increasing, thanks to the increasing complexity of the networks involved. There are corresponding pay-offs, however, for the equipment vendors and service providers that do learn how to meet these challenges. Not only should they be able to provide the equivalent of voice network's service for lower costs, they should also be able to offer new services that combine voice and data in ways that attract new customers -- and boost revenues. Conversely, as long as these challenges go unmet, or in many cases, unrecognized, they will slow the rate at which the promises of the new technology can be realized. Working as I do in a company striving to break through these barriers to success, it is heartening to find a book like this one that helps show the way. VoIP Service Quality comprises three principal sections. The first lays out foundations for what follows. It starts by discussing the principal determinants of connection quality, especially in voice packet-switched networks. It next lays out how customer expectations for voice quality differ among the different services that can be offered with such networks, and closes with a description of the quality impairments that can be created or exacerbated by packet switching. The second section concerns the measurement and evaluation of voice quality. It offers value not only to those who are interested in the quality of packet-switched voice, but also those who are concerned with it in today's public switched telephone network. It shows how statistically rigorous, operationally useful quality testing can be set up in a network with minimal investment. It goes on to discuss a variety of automated test approaches, and lays out the benefits and defects of each. The third section outlines other quality concerns and points the way for measurement of voice quality in future, yet-to-be-defined services that combine voice and data. Those who are interested by this section would do well to read the author's previous book, the somewhat misleadingly entitled *QoS Measurement and Evaluation of Telecommunications Quality of Service*. At the end of this voyage, the reader will have the complete conceptual structure needed to set up a voice service quality organization. Books like this one that lay out an arcane field in clear English are rare, especially since a good measure of humor is thrown in