What is MOS? MOS is the Mean Opinion Score. This is actually a subjective scale with the help of which telephone network end user quality is measured. It’s easy - users just rate the quality and the overall score is ready. Traditional networks as a rule come up with 3.5-4.2 on the five-point scale. VoIP providers are now significantly behind.

The fact is that as VoIP solutions spread globally and come up as enterprise solutions, a great gap in quality between the traditional PSTN networks and VoIP networks becomes more and more obvious. It is not difficult also to understand the reasons for that. PSTN networks is a time-checked solution which something around 100 years old. It was specially designed to trasmit voice and though unable to come up with highly-sophisticated features, serves well in what it should. VoIP is something different. Actually, they are built on the indrastructure that was not intended for voice services. And all these new features have been appearing throughout last 5 years or less.

What this means is that VoIP networks can’t just become perfect. They are cheap, they offer great additional features PSTN will never be able to offer. This makes them attractive to enterprise customers (and success of any technology is highly dependable on whether it is successful with business users), but price is hardly the most crucial point. Quality is. And while VoIP enterprise solutions are now booming, their popularity cah quickly vanish if the quality doesn’t improve crucially soon. Business doesn’t like to invest to something without clear future.

Obviously, VoIP service providers and equipment vendors should think and work hard. Significant quality improvement is urgently needed. Otherwise, we doubt VoIP boom would last for long.