I've been saving big bucks on my calls to Canada with Google Grand Central and, more recently, Google Voice. Until about a week ago, that is.
About that time Google Voice call quality went from variable to completely worthless. So I'm back paying the big bucks for an AT&T mobile call. Good thing I didn't drop my discounted Canada calling plan!
I wondered if I was alone, but I'm not ...
...I, too, have noticed poorer quality and longer delay on most of my calls in the past week or so, both incoming and outgoing. All of my calls were domestic...
... i have also seen very very poor quality both incoming and outgoing. Unfortunately this has been the worst since using the service...
...I suspect they're playing with audio codecs and changing them frequently. Truthfully, Grand Central seemed to be a product much closer to public release...
...I have also been experiencing very poor call quality within Canada and from Canada using GV in the past couple of days. And I agree that Google seems to be trying to tweak things at the technical level. Over the past week or so there were DTMF issues in Canada and perhaps elsewhere; these seem to be resolving (so far), but audio quality is now suffering...
...I am in Canada and have had terrible call quality when I receive calls on GV. It reminds me of the quality I used to have with Vonage a few years ago. People say my voice is breaking up, etc, like a bad cell phone call. I can hear my callers just fine though. This has been going on for over a week, and it is happening to my husband and his work colleague, both also in Canada...
So it's nice to know I have company. Of course we don't know the root cause; some phone carriers may not feel entirely happy about carrying Google's VOIP traffic -- for example.
Frustrating, but nothing to do about it at this time. It is a good lesson about limits to "cloud service" quality and customer communication. No, "beta" is not an excuse; when your email app is in beta for several years the word kind of loses its protective power.
Update 5/7/09: Phew. It's back to normal again. An anonymous but seemingly well informed reader tells us a quality improvement measure had failed and was reversed.
Update 1/9/10: Sometimes it's bad for a while, usually it's good. Google has a reporting form for quality issues. I think they use it!