Voice vs Video

Why most of the times Voice wins?

Video calling has never been so popular, at least not as popular as voice calling because at the enterprise level and even with person to person discussions the conversation is supported by Skype, or other applications. Still in many situations voice remains a better choice. Even if we are talking about the public switch telephone network (PSTN) or voice over IP (VoIP) it will always come out on top. Voice uses one sense hearing while video combines both hearing and seeing, still people can tolerate more imperfections with voice calls.

When you are talking about there is a completely different story, people are looking for a smooth flowing picture with sound matched to the speaker’s action. Video glitches or delays can be a lot more distracting than a minor error in a voice call. Consumers’ expectations are “high”, they want a synchronized video conversation in which there follow the speaker’s mouth on screen to match the sound.

You need significantly more physical hardware, more processing power, more bandwidth and a much more reliable network to ensure a good video conversation. First you need a good camera, it doesn’t matter if we are talking about a mobile camera on your phone or tablet or an ad on camera to your desktop computer. You need enough computer power to keep up capturing both sound and video when you are communicating and convert them into a form for delivery over the Internet. For example when you are in a video conference on your phone, this tests your battery endurance and for better quality you require power in video processing and more overall bandwidth.

A big problem with video calling is that there are no stand-alone services that deliver this product. When both parties use a different video client then getting a connection becomes an exercise in establishing common standards and secure network links.

In conclusion voice calling has fewer problems because the quality can be delivered via the existing network over broadband via VoIP and cell networks. Video calling needs more processing power, more bandwidth and a higher quality broadband connection.

Categorised in: Did you know, VoIP