Get to know more about the Best Voice Monitoring Software Solutions along with their comparison to understand the different functionalities they offer:
Voice Over IP (VoIP) technology delivers significant benefits compared to traditional telephone lines.
From reduced costs, flexibility, and greater scalability to integrating calls with other internet-based business applications, VoIP removes the need for dedicated Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) hardware, moving voice calls to the internet, a service already fundamental to the operations of almost every company.
Unfortunately, all the benefits of VoIP are quickly undone by poor call quality. Establishing a call and transferring data back and forth across the internet involves a tremendous number of network elements. This leaves plenty of room for things to go wrong with lost packets, high latency, network jitters, and many other potential problems.
What You Will Learn:
Top Voice Monitoring Solutions
Service providers and their customers must monitor network performance to ensure high-quality calls are being provided. Typically, this is detailed in a Service Level Agreement (SLA) or Quality of Service (QoS) plan.
But how do you find the data to ensure the network performs to the agreed-upon level?
VoIP monitoring solutions are critical to understanding and solving network issues. With many high-level solutions catering to various markets and offering different functionality, you need to take the time to find the one that suits your needs. Below is an introduction to eight of the best voice monitoring software solutions to consider.
Role of Voice Monitoring in the Age of VoIP
Even with the introduction of new communication channels, voice services continue to expand, presenting growth in both the consumer and business markets.
Hiya’s State of the Call 2022 report shows voice is the preferred communication channel for crucial business interactions, from resolving customer issues and scheduling appointments to closing sales. The report’s data shows that voice calls have increased, or stayed the same for roughly 90% of businesses and consumers:
The below diagram shows trends in phone call usage:
While the market remains strong, customers now have more choices and higher expectations than ever before. Data shows the telecom industry experiences higher churn than any other, with almost half of US consumers stating they canceled a product due to poor quality of service.
This is precisely why voice monitoring tools have become key business enablers in retaining and attracting customers in a crowded marketplace. Additionally, VoIP is adopted in many new scenarios, and providers must find ways to adapt while maintaining their quality of service.
Often this comes down to ensuring dual visibility, closely monitoring both the control plane and the media plane. The history of telephony places emphasis on signal monitoring and the connection between parties in the call.
However, with media now transferred through ever more complex IP networks, service providers must ensure they have the tools and metrics to monitor RTP streams as well.
List of the Best Voice Monitoring Software Solutions
- Voipfuture Qrystal (Recommended)
- NETSCOUT
- Oracle
- VIAVI
- Elisa Polystar
- VoIPmonitor
- EXFO
- Anritsu
Comparison of Top Voice Monitoring Software
| Solution | Best suited for? | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Voipfuture | Communication service providers, wholesalers, enterprises, call centers and cloud-based voice providers looking for assisted root-cause analysis and quality assurance with visibility into signaling and in-call speech quality. |  |
| NETSCOUT | Large communication service providers requiring in-depth signaling analysis. |  |
| Oracle | Enterprises and smaller-scale service providers using Oracle SBCs that need to monitor fixed line voice services. |  |
| VIAVI | Large service providers looking for a comprehensive testing and monitoring suite focused on signaling and application performance. | |
| Elisa Polystar | Service providers looking for a solution that provides an end-to-end view of voice services in real-time. | |
| VoIPmonitor | Enterprises and regional CSPs looking for an open source tool to monitor voice calls in small networks. |  |
| EXFO | Carriers with the need for a suite of modular service assurance solutions for testing and monitoring voice services. | |
| Anritsu | Large communication service providers that require a scalable and customizable solution, regardless of equipment vendor. | |
Detailed Reviews:
#1) Voipfuture Qrystal (Recommended)
Best for communication service providers, wholesalers, enterprises, call centers, and cloud-based voice providers looking for assisted root-cause analysis and quality assurance.
Qrystal from Voipfuture delivers agile monitoring and analytics focusing on the end-customer experience. The company’s unique technology provides dual visibility capabilities to understand SIP and RTP traffic and ensure both are functioning effectively.
Qrystal performs packet-by-packet analysis to identify impairment patterns, reducing the time it takes to spot and fix problems.
Voipfuture also provides RTP time-slicing to improve the collection and comparison of vital call metrics. Operations can effectively and accurately track KPIs across calls to enhance root-cause analysis and solve any problems customers experience.
Benefits:
- Agile voice monitoring services with integrated quality assurance and root-cause analysis focused on improving the customer experience.
- Packet-by-packet analysis to deliver superior insights.
- A single solution with dual visibility into both the control and media plans.
- Automated troubleshooting for both planes.
- Scalable pricing with a pay-as-you-grow model.
Verdict: Voipfuture Qrystal offers comprehensive monitoring and analytics to ensure providers can deliver the best possible voice services.
#2) NETSCOUT
Best for large communication service providers requiring in-depth signaling analysis.
NETSCOUT’s nGeniusONE assurance solution offers providers deep insights into call signaling in real time. With enhanced visibility of your IP network and proactive monitoring, you can deliver consistent, high-performance VoIP services.
Quickly pinpoint the source of call setup failures, long setup delays, and more, using a correlated view of call flow even for complex signaling paths.
NETSCOUT can help businesses identify and fix problems quickly in order to meet customer expectations and avoid costly service interruptions.
Benefits:
- Significantly reduce mean-time-to-repair (MRRT)
- Improved control plane visibility
- Proactive problem detection
- Reduced service interruptions
- Monitoring of Service Level Agreement (SLA) adherence
Verdict: VoIP assurance solutions from NETSCOUT offer real-time network visibility to help guarantee a successful customer experience.
Website: NETSCOUT
#3) Oracle
Best for enterprises and smaller service providers using Oracle session border controllers that need to monitor fixed-line voice services.
Oracle Communications Operations Monitor with VoIP Monitoring offers meaningful network insights. By providing a range of features, Oracle helps teams quickly spot and resolve any problems with VoIP call signaling performance and routing.
This includes network-wide analytics with real-time KPIs and statistics (including R-factor and MOS), packet-level visibility to decode and troubleshoot issues, the ability to trace back data for a single call, live user search, and more. With advanced tools, organizations can set alerts for network issues and localize the root cause of problems.
Additionally, Oracle’s solution can be integrated with Oracle session border controllers.
Benefits:
- Greater service quality with the ability to spot issues before they affect the customer.
- Efficient troubleshooting tools that work in real time, not after the fact.
- Software-based solutions that can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud.
- Provides the ability to identify and prevent phone fraud seamlessly by incorporating Oracle Communications Fraud Monitor.
Verdict: Tech giant Oracle Voice Monitoring Software offers extensive network monitoring services to resolve VoIP call quality and routing.
Website: Oracle
#4) VIAVI
Best for large service providers looking for a comprehensive testing and monitoring suite focused on signaling and application performance.
VIAVI’s Service Assurance solution delivers analytics to monitor and optimize VoIP networks. With machine learning technology accessible through a cloud-native platform, businesses can manage their objectives and offer a great customer experience.
Service Assurance provides a set of policies, processes, and solutions that allow operators to monitor their network, the services it runs, and the quality of service delivered to the end users. Powered by NITRO Mobile (VIAVI’s analytics solution), businesses can access and analyze the data they need to unlock new insights into their network.
Benefits:
- Visibility into all IMS/LTE interfaces for troubleshooting and reporting.
- One-stop shop for visual presentations of selected KPIs and alarms.
- Map view that shows the locations of affected subscribers.
- Very good correlation engine for signaling.
Verdict: A powerful cloud-native platform with machine learning technology to monitor and enhance VoIP networks.
Website: VIAVI
#5) Elisa Polystar
Best for service providers looking for a solution that offers an end-to-end view of voice services in real time.
OSIX from Elisa Polystar provides network monitoring with the deep protocol analytics needed to trace and troubleshoot signaling issues. An end-to-end solution, OSIX helps prevent service quality degradation by enabling service providers to detect and resolve issues before they significantly affect customers.
Benefits:
- Advanced end-to-end network monitoring to maintain a successful customer experience.
- Root-cause analysis that drills deep down into the protocol to return actionable data and improve the service.
- Real-time analysis from the control and user plan, provided through a dedicated MediaProbe across a wide range of network technologies.
- Automated alarms for early problem detection.
Verdict: Elisa Polystar offers a suite of applications to monitor and resolve network issues.
Website: Elisa Polystar
#6) VoIPmonitor
Best for enterprises and regional CSPs looking for an open-source tool to monitor voice calls in small fixed networks.
VoIPmonitor is an open-source network monitoring tool for VoIP protocols running on Linux. It is able to estimate call quality based on network parameters (e.g., delay variation, packet loss, etc.).
VoIPmonitor can be used to track and archive critical network statistics to monitor and troubleshoot performance. With support for many protocols and transports, VoIPmonitor is used by VoIP service providers, enterprises, and call centers.
Benefits:
- Enables users to monitor, troubleshoot, and archive SIP VoIP call quality.
- Able to handle thousands of simultaneous calls on a single server.
- Protects against fraudulent calls and follows watchdog rules.
Verdict: Powerful open-source tools to determine call quality and troubleshoot VoIP issues in fixed networks.
Website: VoIPmonitor
#7) EXFO
Best for carriers with the need for a suite of modular service assurance solutions for testing and monitoring mobile voice services.
Nova Core is a fully virtualized passive monitoring solution for circuit-switched and mobile networks. It provides integrated assurance for hybrid networks, core, and RAN. Nova Core works together with Nova RAN to uniquely provide end-to-end geo-located analytics and troubleshooting from a single interface.
Other modules from the Nova suite deliver AI analytics, end-to-end troubleshooting, insights into user experience and many other features. For example, Nova Active supports widely adopted tests to monitor network elements, systems, and third-party platforms.
Benefits:
- Scalable solution for monitoring multi-vendor mobile networks.
- Field-proven cloud-native architecture with microservices-based probes.
- Comprehensive signaling KQIs for in-depth customer experience analytics.
- Detection and diagnosis of 5G coverage, hand-off, roaming, mobility, QoE, and data throughput issues.
Verdict: A passive probing solution for monitoring the customer experience over virtualized mobile networks and services.
Website: EXFO
#8) Anritsu
Best for large communication service providers that require a scalable and customizable solution, regardless of the equipment vendor.
Anritsu offers network, service, and customer visibility through its MasterClaw Monitoring solution. Working for both physical and virtualized networks, MasterClaw Monitoring offers troubleshooting capabilities to help teams oversee their network from the complete picture down to the small details.
MasterClaw generates KPIs based on your own specifications, reduces MTTR, and improves operational efficiency.
Benefits:
- Advanced end-to-end troubleshooting to understand voice quality across signaling and user planes.
- MasterClaw’s non-intrusive probes facilitate monitoring for multi-vendor networks regardless of equipment.
- From a single node to a network-wide solution, scale monitoring to match your needs.
- Dynamic smart alerts that self-adjust automatically to inform you of malicious network traffic.
Verdict: MasterClaw Monitoring gives service providers visibility into their network, their services, and the end customer experience.
Website: Anritsu
Conclusion
Many businesses need to deliver great call quality to ensure the satisfaction of their customers. In the age of VoIP, this means finding a comprehensive and effective voice monitoring solution/tool capable of delivering real-time information on network performance and proactively spotting problems before they affect end users.
Many VoIP monitoring tools out there claim to deliver everything you need, yet fail to make a real difference in the customer experience.
This article covers eight Voice Monitoring Software solutions capable of providing meaningful data and analytics to help network performance. With a bit more investigation, we think you will be able to find a perfect solution for you and your customers.