This may be the right question for mobile users, but is the question, "Can you hear me now?" the right question for VoIP users, for business VoIP users? 

I spoke with Frank Paterno, VP Marketing for Intelliverse (not on the left), the Atlanta-based hosted VoIP provider, who briefed me on what the company is doing to assure VoIP quality in the 'bring your own broadband' segment. The company has two leading segments, the wholesale VoIP market where Intelliverse is inside the VoIP services platform of Covad and other ISPs, and a network of agents reselling services in the 'bring your own broadband' network.

Intelliverse has licensed the deployment of Brix Networks technology passive monitoring software agents in remote points in their network. The Brix agent simulates SIP and RTP streams as approximations of VoIP calls allowing the measurement of jitter, packet loss and delay characteristics. From these measurements, the Brix software can estimate the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) approximations of the user experience for sessions approximately traversing the same path. In this way, the company's Network Operations engineers can take corrective action if available.

Simulation is necessary, according to Frank, since the company doesn't control the network endpoints which is required for real-time endpoint VoIP quality management. Even still, the service provider continues to push its VoIP quality agenda and expects to differentiate itself around this capability and a continuing plan for enhancements. So, instead of asking 'Can you hear me?' we will be asking 'How well can you hear me? On a scale of 1 to 5 where 5….'