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How big is the impact of VoiP on total usage

I have been using BT Broadband unlimited for about 4-1/2 years, and have been a regular Skype user for the same length of time.
Over the last 4-5 weeks call quality has suddenly dived, but only on my outgoing voice signal, I hear everyone else very well. I have run the speedtest from this site a few times at various times of the day and am getting an average 1.8meg down and 240k up.
About 3 weeks ago I decided to accept BT's offer to upgrade my speed as my local exchange now has 8meg capability. Obviously this came with a cap, over which I am charged. After numerous nagging calls from me, they now tell me my lines max capability is 2.2meg and are clueless as to what my useage ( max and avg ) has been.
If I have been sold a pup as I can't get much faster anyway, can any other ISP offer faster upload speeds as 2meg is adequate for what I need ( very little download volume other than email attachments ), and high limits other than an hour or so skype - skype chats, every day !!
 
VoIP usage very much depends on the software technology being used and its compression codec. It is also designed to work with slower speeds, so even an upload of 256Kbps would work with VoIP technology since audio is very easy to compress.. heck, I could do VoIP on a dialup line :).

However, VoIP's worst enemy is latency, which is determined by the time it takes to send a "packet" of data from one point to another. This is a bit like how long your postman needs to deliver a letter to you because he first has to visit lots of other locations [servers] and that all adds up to the total round-trip time.

Having high latency (high delay in packet delivery) can cause VoIP calls to go a bit loopy, injecting delays into the conversations. Now I can’t speak for Skype, but my guess would be that something is slowing the delivery of data from your end to the recipients, albeit not necessarily the ISPs fault.

Take note, if you only recently upgraded to the 8Mbps package then you may still be within the 10 day training period. This can cause high latency and connection oddities as your line attempts to determine the best speed.
 
on another note you can even skype on dialup, no l havent done it personally however l used to have a girlfriend in the US and dialup was all she had for some time skype doesnt need that much bandwidth...

l will note tho you havent mentioned what you were doing while skyping.. that is to say using things like bittorrent can also cause issues even less menial tasks depending on how intensive they are on your connection.. in any case other than that l suggest you take Marks advice into account as well as he also made a very good point.. sadly most ISPs dont inform us of.
 
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cumulative gig/month

Thanks guys. I never could understand the BT Bangalore statement on a 10 day ramp up of speed, line training sounds more feasible, I will be less sceptical of them - maybe. All that I use Skype for, is to make calls, I'm self employed and work from home so I probably spend at least 60-90 minutes per day on calls, all over the world. I am scared this might really hit my total gig / month. Obviously I would not swap to a long term contract with a cap, but as my contact database has over 5000 email addresses, the thought of changing ISP supplier and therefore automatically having to change email addresses (?) and notify everyone is seriosuly daunting.
 
personally no offence, but using an ISP email for business purposes is pretty silly.. for just the reason you stated "changing ISP" l would have opted for a domain name and a cheap service to host my emails or a hosting contract like l do now, l dont run a business its more non profit in any case my emails wont get lost and l will continue to receive them if l change ISP thats the whole point.

for me l have over 10,000 members on our forum so l couldnt deal with tech support if l used my ISP email :p
 
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