Skype sound quality

Hi,

i wonder if anyone has advice for me? i am in Japan and my girlfriend is currently in Thailand. tried using skype to call her mobile today - she doesnt have her own computer there - for the first time and found the sound quality poor, the connection patchy.

is this a common experience? or is there anything i can do?

(side point - i had a free offer for some call minutes but they seemed to be swallowed up very quickly - is skype the cheapest option?)

thanks.

 

I dont use VOIP so I don't know if the program I am suggesting will help, or not, but try

Solicall from www.solicall.com

It got a 4 star review in PCUtilities magazine (UK, USA and Australia), p47 in edition 81. It is free and is supposed to reduce background noise, etc. Hope this helps a bit. Bazza

 

thanks, i will give it a try.

 

I've heard of 'noise' problems in skype to Indonesia due to poor bandwidth there.

Also, I found voip/ skype were not any less expesnive than my major telecom's international rates. :-(

K

 

The skype connection quality depends on a lot of things. The skype call will terminate onto the POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) at the point nearest to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) number that you're calling. So in your case, it'll be going to Thailand and then going out onto the phone network.

Here's something to consider, though. If she's using roaming (say, came from Japan and went to Thailand) then the call will actually terminate in Japan, and then the mobile network will peer it over to their roaming providers in the other country. So in effect the skype connection isn't leaving the country, and you'll be paying exactly the same as calling from a landline in your country.

As for the sound quality, if the skype connection is leaving the country then you're limited to the peering between your two countries provided by your ISP, and the peering in the destination country. This is because skype dynamically adjusts sound quality to ensure the sound is in real time (or as near to it as possible). The more packet loss there is, the fewer packets it will send.

I believe that JPIX provides international peering for japan - I have no idea what their peering is like to Indonesia though.

Once you've left Japan, it'll carry on to the IIEX (Indonesiua Internet Exchange), and then on to THIX (Thailand Internet Exchange Service). If the skype POTS termination node is located somewhere that is connected directly to THIX then you would have a good connection with all liklihood. However, it's more likely the skype node is on an ISP which shares a connection to THIX.

News Just in: apparently there was a fiber break at JPIX a couple of months ago, and it's unknown whether it's been fully restored yet. This may well be your problem!