Problems w/ quality of international calls

[ggrosz]

Hi there. We've been using Sonic.net to call Japan for a number of years now. Things had always been fine. However, for many months now, the quality of service has dropped precipitously. It's been at least half a year like this, if not for a full year now. There are slight delays in speaking and being heard, presumably on both ends. But more importantly, the caller sounds much more distant to us, and they have a hard time hearing us. It's not staticky, but it's definitely not a *clear* connection in any sense. I don't know if this same type of problem has recently plagued calls to other countries, too, but it's been a consistent problem for calls to landlines in Japan, at least.

We're in the middle of an important phone call to Japan right at this very moment, and after too many difficulties with the person in Japan being able to hear us clearly, we had them call us back using their connection. Lo and behold, the connection sounds clear and close and without delays.

So then... 1) What has happened that has caused the quality of service to decline to the point of near unusability? And 2) Are there any plans / Is there any hope for the quality of international service to Japan to be restored? If so, when?

Thank you in advance for your response.

[dct]

Hey ggrosz,

Does the poor sound quality persist across multiple telephone numbers, or is it just the one? It's possible it could just be the route that the call is taking after it leaves our network, but any more information (date / time calls were made, telephone numbers, etc) you have about the issue would be extremely helpful in identifying and resolving the problem.

If this is 100% reproducible, please make a call to the destination that is having issues, and PM me the date, time, and telephone number. I'll get this information over to our network operations group to investigate!

[User]

I have been trying to make international calls. It always gives one ring back tone and becomes silent. This on top of my expensive DSL. Very frustrated.

[dct]

I have been trying to make international calls. It always gives one ring back tone and becomes silent. This on top of my expensive DSL. Very frustrated.

Sorry to hear about the issues! Any information you can provide would be helpful in getting this addressed: date, time, and the telephone number you attempted to call. Also, these examples need to be recent (within 24 hours) for investigation.