If your business is considering switching from an analog phone system to a hosted VoIP system, there are a few things you need to ensure HD voice quality and a great user experience. One of these is sufficient internet bandwidth.
What Is Internet Bandwidth?
Internet bandwidth may sound a bit techy, but it’s easy to understand when you compare it to a water pipe. Your internet connection is like a pipe, and the data is like water running through it. More bandwidth is like a larger pipe that allows more to flow through it. For things to run smoothly, a pipe must be big enough to allow a good flow of whatever it’s carrying.
Your internet bandwidth is measured using megabits per second (Mbps or Mb/s). It’s worth noting that megabits are the baby brother of megabytes (MB), which are usually used to describe the size of your computer storage or a large file. We’ll talk about large files later. Anyway, you’ll often see bandwidth referred to as “upload/download speed” by providers and speed tests, with the numbers measured in megabits per second.
VoIP Bandwidth Requirements: How Much Is Necessary?
Just like other types of digital files, the size or throughput of phone calls can vary. For the purpose of estimating your business's hosted VoIP bandwidth requirement, you can use the safe estimate of 0.2 Mbps per call.
When getting a pricing estimate for VoIP service, we suggest you look at your average call volume. However, for a bandwidth requirement estimate, you'll want to look at your peak call volume to ensure your internet can handle your busiest hours.
Take the peak number of calls and multiply that by 0.2 Mbps and you’ll have an idea of the bandwidth you need to ensure reliable VoIP service and good call quality. If you have more than one department, make sure to add up each department’s peak call number to arrive at a company total, then multiply by 0.2.
What About Video Calls and Other Data Transfers?
Video calls can require anywhere from 3x to 20x the amount of bandwidth as an audio call, depending on the quality. A safe estimate for a video conference is roughly 5 Mbps per attendee, but this depends on the service you’re using. Some services use more data than others, so check with your service provider for their requirements. You'll need to estimate how many video calls might be occurring at once to estimate their impact on your bandwidth.
The same applies for other types of data transfers. Your phone system will share internet bandwidth with all your company’s other computing activities that require the internet. While web browsing and email applications won't have much of an impact, activities like streaming video and transferring large data files will need to be considered for your estimate. Keep in mind that some high-resolution photo and graphic arts files can be many megabytes in size. You may want to conduct an audit, taking a look at all your staff’s digital activities to analyze your company’s bandwidth needs today and plan for future growth.
VoIP Bandwidth Calculator: How to Check Your Speeds
Your business should already have an internet plan with an Internet Service Provider. ISPs price their plans according to bandwidth, which should make it easy for a VoIP bandwidth calculator to see if your current plan meets your estimate. Look at the upload/download speeds of your plan or give your provider a call to see if your current plan meets your VoIP bandwidth requirements. If it doesn't, you should consider upgrading your plan.
It's possible that the advertised speeds and the speeds you're getting don't match up. To make sure, you can use OnSIP’s free VoIP Network Test to see what speeds you're currently getting.