Q1 - Help - What's the best way to test a outbound SIP trunk provider?

Hi,

I had a question about how to choose a good VOIP ITSP outbound SIP trunk providers from the huge amount of competitors out there. Though I will be choosing these providers for commercial use, I hope that some of you who may have gone through the process of finding the right provider either for yourself or for your own commercial needs, would be able to help me.

I understand that I should be comparing fees/billing increment, but I need help finding out what I should be comparing and how I should be testing these providers. I am very very concerned about call quality, and do not want to be in a situation where calls get disconnected frequently, or there is frequently poor audio quality.

I know I can do a test call, but don’t know how to best setup a test that would provide meaningful results. I feel that the less well I setup the test, the lesser the value of the test results will be.

I guess my main question, is to ask you guys how you would approach testing these VOIP providers? (for example, what time of days should I test, how long should the calls be for, should I hire test dialers, etc.?)?

Also, the above question has been mostly focused on outbound calls. I am also trying to test DID providers, and wondering also how I could setup a meaningful test for this?

Thank you!

The best way to test a provider is to purchase a small amount of credit (or ask for a test account) and try calls at different times of the day.

Tools to test VoIP quality require dedicated servers and client software to generate meaningful results. Ping tests and web based applet’s do not provide a true indicator of voice quality.