Data usage on VOIP?

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peejayw

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#18479 11-Jan-2008 19:13

Does anyone have any info on the amount of data used in a VOIP call ie MB's per minute? What I am looking at here is the cost of mobile data plans and the data consumed in a call versus the cost of a normal cellphone call.
Thanks.

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sbiddle

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#104293 11-Jan-2008 19:21

It depends on your codec.

ulaw/alaw use roughly 87.2kbps in each direction for a call (175kbps total)

g.729 uses roughly 32kbps in each direction for call (64kbps total)

You also need to factor in registration that occurs every few minutes.

grant_k

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#104300 11-Jan-2008 20:54

peejayw: Does anyone have any info on the amount of data used in a VOIP call ie MB's per minute? What I am looking at here is the cost of mobile data plans and the data consumed in a call versus the cost of a normal cellphone call.

Steve has given the raw data rates in kbps for both of the common codecs in use.

Translating it into MB and adding overhead, for the G729 codec it works out to between 30 and 35MB per hour. It would be prohibitive to use either of the G711 codecs on a Mobile Data Plan, but I have used G729 over Telecom's EV-DO network and it's not too bad.

hellonearthisman

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#104302 11-Jan-2008 21:13

Slingshot said theirs works at 64kbps (a throttled adsl connection) with quality a bit better than a cell phone.

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Much-Bandwidth-is-Required-for-VoIP-Phones?&id=57850

In most cases, the normal VoIP telephone call will use up 90 Kbps (kilobits per second). If you have a Broadband Internet service provider that doesn’t offer much bandwidth then most VoIP providers give you the option to lower the VoIP voice quality by lowering the bandwidth used for VoIP calls to 60 Kbps or, to really conserve your bandwidth, 30 Kbps. Most people can't tell the difference between the three settings.

I had a read of the NZConnection VOIP section, but it didn't dive into how much data was used.