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VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is the technology that Skype and WhatsApp use to offer free phone calls online. It connects people using the internet rather than traditional landlines, with better overall audio quality. While it is affordable and convenient, one of the drawbacks of VoIP is that it requires an internet connection to work.
The question is: how fast does that internet connection need to be? Can dial-up connections and extremely weak or slow WiFi support VoIP calls?
How Internet Speeds Work
Internet speeds and bandwidth are measured by the amount of data that is being sent, divided by the time it takes to send it. For example, internet speeds are usually expressed in megabytes per second (Mbps).
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) often advertise internet service packages as offering a certain speed, when the reality is that average speeds are much lower. The advertised speeds are a maximum. If an ISP is selling high-speed internet claiming that speeds can be up to 60mbps, average speeds can be a third of that or less.
In this example, the advertised 60mbps ends up being 20mbps in reality.
However, it is less than that if users are connected through Wi-Fi. The connection loses some of its speed through the Ethernet router, sometimes slowing by as much as 50%. That means a 20Mbps connection can actually be a 10Mbps connection.
Bandwidth is a resource that is shared across devices. If the internet is like water coming from a hose at a constant rate, diverting that single stream into three or four means that each stream is smaller. If many users draw from the same broadband connection, they will each have a slower connection.
If a household broadband connection is 10mbps and it is being used to the fullest by four different people, they will share the bandwidth and each connect at about 2.5 Mbps. Theoretically, a service that an ISP advertises as 60 Mbps might be experienced as 2.5 Mbps through these dilutions.
It is easy to test the actual speed of a connection by running an online speed test. That speed will change throughout an average day and over time due to the network, the device, and bandwidth usage.
How Fast Does the Internet Need to Be for VoIP Calls?
The answer is: faster than dial-up, but still not that fast.
Dial-up and satellite internet are not a good match for VoIP, simply because the speeds are too low. However, wired broadband connections are almost always good enough for clear calls. According to Ooma, even 100 Kbps or 0.1 Mbps can be fast enough for a clear conversation.
The recommended internet speed requirement for VoIP calls is 0.5Mbps. This is about as low a speed as it gets with modern broadband. Many ISPs guarantee a minimum rate of 0.5Mbps. According to internet speed experts Ookla, the global average internet speeds in September 2021 were 113.25Mbps on fixed broadband and 63.14Mbps on mobile. That means that for fixed broadband, the average speeds were 22550% faster than the necessary minimum speeds for VoIP.
VoIP does take a significant amount of data compared to sending a text message, for example. However, VoIP requires less data than many other routine data operations, like watching a YouTube video. According to Zen.co.uk, as of 2019, the recommended internet speed for watching standard definition (480p) video was 3 Mbps. Even in remote areas and developing countries, internet speeds are good enough to use VoIP.
Try VoIP Calling
A simple way to know if internet speeds are fast enough for VoIP calls is to try to make one.
VoIP technology is excellent at reducing audio file sizes and optimizing the ways data is transferred between callers. These efficiencies have only compounded over time, so VoIP services require very little bandwidth. At the same time, worldwide average broadband speeds have increased dramatically to the point that even the slowest wired broadband connections are typically more than fast enough for VoIP calls.