Covid-19 impacting phone-call quality; increasing connection failure rate
A West Cork technology company has discovered that Covid-19 is impacting international telecoms.
Phone-call connection rates and audio quality have declined in Italy, Spain, France, and Germany.
Spearline, a Cork tech company that monitors international phone numbers for connectivity and audio quality, released the research this week.
Spearline’s aggregate platform data provides an insight into how networks are performing.
Italy’s connection rate continues to be volatile, with as much as a 10% failure rate. The country’s audio quality is 4% below normal levels.
Spain’s connection rates dropped to 98.5% success on March 16, but are improving again.
Spearline noted a mild variation in audio quality in Spain (+/- 1%), but this has remained relatively stable.
France saw a 5% dip in connection rates, with failures noted on March 17. However, good audio quality has been maintained, apart from periodic slippage.
In Germany, a connection failure rate of 1.7% was noted on March 17. Good quality has been maintained, apart from periodic slippage, much like France.
“Affected countries are significantly restricting the movement of individuals, imposing travel freezes, and implementing work-from-home (WfH) arrangements,” said Kevin Buckley, co-founder and CEO at Spearline. “This has led to a high increase in demand for both video and audio calls, and has caused a strain on telecommunications networks across afflicted regions and countries.
“We are closely monitoring countries globally that have been most impacted by Covid-19.”
Spearline has servers in 70 countries, which cover 89% of GDP and reach 90% of landlines globally. It has conducted millions of test calls worldwide, resulting in billions of data-points.
