You Can Finally Trust Computer Audio with Zoom’s VoIP Service

Why is it that some people, when connecting their audio for a video conference, dial in via a traditional landline or cell phone rather than using the computer audio? They’re calling into a meeting on a telephone for audio, even while joining video via their computer. But why not just press one button on your computer to connect both audio AND video to a meeting?

The answer we hear a lot is that computer audio from most web conferencing solutions just isn’t great, with connection issues and poor service making it a “struggle” for users.

Many of us have been burned by less-than-stellar voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP), and it’s now difficult to trust because it’s choppy or it cuts out. But we’re here to tell you that with Zoom, VoIP just works!

This post shares details on how we built Zoom, why our VoIP is so reliable, and why you can finally trust computer audio.

Voice over internet protocol is the technology that allows you to make voice calls using an internet connection instead of a traditional or analog phone line. It’s the audio that comes over your computer, conference room system, or mobile device via the internet. You can call anyone with a phone number using VoIP services, including local, long-distance, mobile, and even international numbers.

We’ve all been burned by unstable computer audio from a legacy communication provider. Typical VoIP solution providers don’t provide sufficient bandwidth and system capacity, leading to packet loss, network latency, jittery or choppy audio, persistent echo, and an overall poor user experience. 

In fact, some vendors even encourage users to dial in by phone (and use the computer for video) because they can’t trust their own computer audio to work. When their computer audio fails to turn on or cuts out, they know it’s hard to trust it again.

It might take some convincing, but we want you to know you can trust Zoom’s VoIP service. Here’s why.

Thanks to our best-in-class audio processing and software architecture, Zoom VoIP delivers crystal-clear quality and a reliable connection even in low-bandwidth environments. In fact, 85% of Zoom meeting participants use VoIP to connect audio.

Designed for low latency and noise cancellation, Zoom’s computer audio beats traditional PSTN and VoIP services because we: 

• Use higher clarity broadband audio (HD voice) instead of the narrow-band audio used by PSTN lines, which often muffle the sound.
• Carefully smooth over lost packets when network conditions deteriorate. In fact, Zoom continues to perform well in environments with up to 45% packet loss.
• Employ advanced audio processing technologies to suppress all types of noise, cancel echoes, and remove room reverberation.
• Built in smart features, such as audio feedback detection and automatic mute reminder, to provide a user-friendly communication experience.

Additionally, our audio and video run on the Zoom cloud, a proprietary global network built with one goal in mind: delivering high-quality communications experiences for today’s users. 

Zoom provides industry-leading customer satisfaction because it’s our No. 1 priority. And it’s why we built an infrastructure of reliable service that directly supports our audio and video quality. Zoom is able to meet its customer and user's needs through its own global network of seventeen colocated data centers, as well as through public cloud data centers, which are predominately operated through Amazon Web Services (“AWS”).  The Services are designed to work in a way that any information entering our ecosystem is routed through the data center that is nearest to the user sending or receiving the data. For example, for a US user, Zoom's systems first try to connect to one of our five US data centers for the best connection. If there is no response within a specific time-period (usually 5.5 seconds) from any of the five US data centers, then additional back-up bridge servers around the world are pinged. Here’s how we make it happen:

• You get a local point of presence: Zoom’s geographically dispersed data center network allows users to connect directly to the Zoom cloud through a local point of presence. A local on-ramp to the Zoom cloud will deliver high-quality audio, video, and collaboration services no matter where you are.
• High availability is all we know: The Zoom cloud is fully redundant at each point of presence around the world. All servers and network devices have redundant components and multiple network paths to avoid single points of failure. If there ever is an issue at one of our data centers, that traffic automatically redirects to a fully-functioning point of presence so you don’t miss a beat.
• Distributed networks, for the win: The Zoom cloud runs on a distributed network of low-latency multimedia routers. All session data originating from a host device and arriving at the participants’ devices is dynamically switched, so every meeting participant gets a local point of presence that’s also integrated into Zoom’s high-quality global backbone.

When you get high-quality computer audio, you get a better communications experience but also a number of other benefits. With Zoom’s VoIP service, you get:

• Peace of mind that your computer audio will always work 
• A faster, easier way to join your critical calls
• Cost savings when you eliminate the per-minute audio charges from PSTNs

Don't believe us? Here’s what the team over at Cooper Standard Automotive, a leading automotive supplier, had to say about Zoom VoIP:

“In our old solutions, it was always dial-in. So we were really nervous adding that Voice over IP onto our network,” said Matt Harper, IT manager at Cooper Standard. 

“But we’re up to 80% (usage) of VoIP,” said Bob Cross, Cooper Standard’s IT director. “And with Zoom’s VoIP, you eliminate the cost for the dial-in — and the quality is better.”

We understand that dialing in via phone might be the only option at times. Perhaps you don’t have an internet connection or you’re on the go and need to join via phone. Traditional phone audio will still be the go-to option in those scenarios, and Zoom is happy to provide the flexibility of joining over telephone audio or computer audio. 

But we wanted to tell you that you no longer have to fear using computer audio anymore when you have VoIP through Zoom’s unified communications platform.

And if you’re in the market, Zoom works with a lot of great wired and wireless headsets. These quality devices help block out background noise if you’re sharing space with others while working from home.

Ready to bring more reliable computer audio (and video!) to your enterprise? Sign up for a personalized demo with a Zoom product specialist today!

Editor's note: This post was updated Nov. 6, 2020, to clarify language around customizing your data routing settings.