Cell Phones in Great Britain - how much data do VOIP calls use?

Author

how much data do VOIP calls use?

kevin bailey

2007-10-27, 10:33 pm

Hi,

Would really like to be able to connect to our VOIP (Epygi) exchange box
using new handsets for colleagues.

Will be looking at about four handsets initially and am looking at various
price plans. Current favourite seems to be getting E65's on Three.

What I'd like to know is - how much data does VOIP calls use up on average?

For example - Three have 'Business share 1000' which allows for up to 500MB
shared.

What length of VOIP calls could be made using 500MB? And at what average
rate? i.e. does 1 minute of VOIP call amount to 2MB of data?

Cheers,

Kevin

acdeag

2007-10-27, 10:33 pm

"kevin bailey" < kbailey@freewayproje
cts.com> wrote in message
news:fg09ut$ln2$1$83
00dec7@news.demon.co.uk...
> Hi,
>
> Would really like to be able to connect to our VOIP (Epygi) exchange box
> using new handsets for colleagues.
>
> Will be looking at about four handsets initially and am looking at various
> price plans. Current favourite seems to be getting E65's on Three.
>
>
>
> What I'd like to know is - how much data does VOIP calls use up on
> average?
>
> For example - Three have 'Business share 1000' which allows for up to
> 500MB
> shared.
>
> What length of VOIP calls could be made using 500MB? And at what average
> rate? i.e. does 1 minute of VOIP call amount to 2MB of data?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Kevin
>
>

Remember this option will only work when in 3G coverage. Also not sure what
the quality is like using a data signal for the calls.

Graham.

2007-10-27, 10:33 pm

"acdeag" <x@y.com> wrote in message
news:5ohpufFmueu9U1@
mid.individual.net...
> "kevin bailey" < kbailey@freewayproje
cts.com> wrote in message
> news:fg09ut$ln2$1$83
00dec7@news.demon.co.uk...
>
> Remember this option will only work when in 3G coverage. Also not sure
> what the quality is like using a data signal for the calls.

He needs a 3G signal to connect to his LAN using wi-fi???????

--
Graham

%Profound_observatio
n%

Dennis Ferguson

2007-10-27, 10:33 pm

On 2007-10-27, kevin bailey < kbailey@freewayproje
cts.com> wrote:
> What I'd like to know is - how much data does VOIP calls use up on average?
>
> For example - Three have 'Business share 1000' which allows for up to 500MB
> shared.
>
> What length of VOIP calls could be made using 500MB? And at what average
> rate? i.e. does 1 minute of VOIP call amount to 2MB of data?

I'll guess about 5 kB per second in each direction, 10 kB/s total
assuming they are counting bytes in both directions. That would
make a 1 minute call cost about 0.6 MB.

This is what I measured, anyway. You really need to test this
yourself to be sure since it depends on things which can vary with
the setup, like the codec in use.

Dennis Ferguson

kevin bailey

2007-10-28, 7:33 am

Dennis Ferguson wrote:

> On 2007-10-27, kevin bailey < kbailey@freewayproje
cts.com> wrote:
>
> I'll guess about 5 kB per second in each direction, 10 kB/s total
> assuming they are counting bytes in both directions. That would
> make a 1 minute call cost about 0.6 MB.
>
> This is what I measured, anyway. You really need to test this
> yourself to be sure since it depends on things which can vary with
> the setup, like the codec in use.
>
> Dennis Ferguson

Thanks for that - gives me a rough idea to help look into the costs.

Cheers,

Kevin

kevin bailey

2007-10-28, 7:33 am

acdeag wrote:

> "kevin bailey" < kbailey@freewayproje
cts.com> wrote in message
> news:fg09ut$ln2$1$83
00dec7@news.demon.co.uk...
>
> Remember this option will only work when in 3G coverage. Also not sure
> what the quality is like using a data signal for the calls.

Apparently someone has this working with an E65 over Three's network and
sounded ok about it.

Cheers,

Kevin

Gordon Henderson

2007-10-28, 7:33 am

In article < fg09ut$ln2$1$8300dec
7@news.demon.co.uk>,
kevin bailey < kbailey@freewayproje
cts.com> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Would really like to be able to connect to our VOIP (Epygi) exchange box
>using new handsets for colleagues.
>
>Will be looking at about four handsets initially and am looking at various
>price plans. Current favourite seems to be getting E65's on Three.
>
>
>
>What I'd like to know is - how much data does VOIP calls use up on average?
>
>For example - Three have 'Business share 1000' which allows for up to 500MB
>shared.
>
>What length of VOIP calls could be made using 500MB? And at what average
>rate? i.e. does 1 minute of VOIP call amount to 2MB of data?

If you're using a 3G connection it'll work OK. It's almost usable with
GPRS, but then you'd be better off just using the phone as a phone...

If the phone will support the GSM codec via VoIP, then you're looking
at a stream of about 20Kbits/sec both ways, so first check if you're
only billed for incoming data, outgoing, or both. (GSM is 13Kb/sec
but when you add the over head of IP it goes up to about 20Kb/sec)

At 20Kbits/sec, a minute of a call will use about 150K Bytes of data
each way per minute, so 500MB is going to last for about 55 hours of
talk-time. Half that if they count incoming and outgoing data.

You might be better off getting a SIP/GSM adapter and putting a SIM
card in it and then getting a business contract with the mobile telco. A
lot of these will give you unlimited phone to phone calls to each phone
inside the plan, so if you had another SIM on the same contract,
connected to the PBX, punters can call the office on the same contract,
and vice-versa (although I've no idea how the Epygi might handle that -
I only deal with asterisk, and it's fairly trivial to set something up
to handle that.

You can get 1, 2 or 4 SIM/SIP adapter modules, depending on how many
simultaneous calls you want to make to/from the mobiles. That also means
you don't need anything fancy on the handsets as they just need to make
ordinary calls and not VoIP calls.

Gordon

kevin bailey

2007-10-28, 7:33 am

> If the phone will support the GSM codec via VoIP, then you're looking
> at a stream of about 20Kbits/sec both ways, so first check if you're
> only billed for incoming data, outgoing, or both. (GSM is 13Kb/sec
> but when you add the over head of IP it goes up to about 20Kb/sec)
>

Good point - will definitely ask about upload and download limits.

Will also look into the codecs available. Probably supported on the N95
from a brief look.

I have installed an Asterisk server once and have been on a training day for
the Epygi boxes - so my knowledge of codecs is limited. (I'm a programmer
really!).

The GSM codec doesn't sound familiar but will look into it further - it
sounds to me like a codec used over 3G - is that right?

> At 20Kbits/sec, a minute of a call will use about 150K Bytes of data
> each way per minute, so 500MB is going to last for about 55 hours of
> talk-time. Half that if they count incoming and outgoing data.
>

Which sounds pretty good.

> You might be better off getting a SIP/GSM adapter and putting a SIM
> card in it and then getting a business contract with the mobile telco. A
> lot of these will give you unlimited phone to phone calls to each phone
> inside the plan, so if you had another SIM on the same contract,
> connected to the PBX, punters can call the office on the same contract,
> and vice-versa (although I've no idea how the Epygi might handle that -
> I only deal with asterisk, and it's fairly trivial to set something up
> to handle that.
>
> You can get 1, 2 or 4 SIM/SIP adapter modules, depending on how many
> simultaneous calls you want to make to/from the mobiles. That also means
> you don't need anything fancy on the handsets as they just need to make
> ordinary calls and not VoIP calls.
>

Sounds very interesting - especially as I'm inclined towards setting up my
own Asterisk box for the new office phone system.

It would definitely be a challenge for me currently to set up the adapters
and routes etc but its very interesting in that it shows how flexible the
Asterisk system is - so effectively there is a way of routing calls to go
over the mobile network.

I'm interested in basically setting up the mobiles so that they can act as
extensions to the PBX - and can connect using Wifi. This means that
colleagues can be all connected into the same system and calls can be
transfered around even if they are working from home.

Cheers,

Kevin

> Gordon

acdeag

2007-10-28, 10:33 am

"Graham." <me@privacy.com> wrote in message
news:fg0d99$7b6$1@re
gistered.motzarella.org...
>
>
> "acdeag" <x@y.com> wrote in message
> news:5ohpufFmueu9U1@
mid.individual.net...
>
> He needs a 3G signal to connect to his LAN using wi-fi???????
>
>
> --
> Graham
>
> %Profound_observatio
n%
>

If you READ the question he talks about Business Share 1000 with 500Mb of
data, does not sound like a wifi question to me!!

Gordon Henderson

2007-10-28, 3:33 pm

In article < fg1ri1$1um$1$8302bc1
0@news.demon.co.uk>,
kevin bailey < kbailey@freewayproje
cts.com> wrote:
>
>Good point - will definitely ask about upload and download limits.
>
>Will also look into the codecs available. Probably supported on the N95
>from a brief look.
>
>I have installed an Asterisk server once and have been on a training day for
>the Epygi boxes - so my knowledge of codecs is limited. (I'm a programmer
>really!).
>
>The GSM codec doesn't sound familiar but will look into it further - it
>sounds to me like a codec used over 3G - is that right?

GSM was developed for ... er, GSM communications. It's what mobile
phones use to encode speech, transmit it and decode it at the far-end.
It's very efficient, sounds reasonable for speech (not so good for
music!) and is generally acceptable by the millions of people who use it
every day when making mobile calls.

Another advantage is that it's patent free. It's not "free" in terms of
the CPU power required to do the compression and decompression in
real-time though, but there's usually dedicated hardware inside a mobile
phone doing it for you.

(This is something important to remmber though when interfacing to PBXs -
they might have to "transcode" from GSM to whatever the other side is
using)

>
>Which sounds pretty good.
>
>
>
>Sounds very interesting - especially as I'm inclined towards setting up my
>own Asterisk box for the new office phone system.

I do it for a living... Steep learning curve, but there are a lot of
plug & go type systems which will get you started. Look up TrixBox for exmaple.

The sort of GSM adapters I've used fall into 2 categorys -the first is
designed as a "black box" to let you use a normal analogue handset on a
SIM card - plug the card into the box, plug a phone into to box, turn it
on and off you go. Designed to be used with an external antennae in poor
reception areas - one I have also has battery backup too, and an rs232
port I can use to send text message..

The other has an Ethernet port, and it talks SIP - so you don't need an
analog phone interface to talk to it.

See

http://www. discountphonesystems .html

and

http://www. discountphonesystems

for examples.

>It would definitely be a challenge for me currently to set up the adapters
>and routes etc but its very interesting in that it shows how flexible the
>Asterisk system is - so effectively there is a way of routing calls to go
>over the mobile network.
>
>I'm interested in basically setting up the mobiles so that they can act as
>extensions to the PBX - and can connect using Wifi. This means that
>colleagues can be all connected into the same system and calls can be
>transfered around even if they are working from home.

I'd be tempted to go down a slightly different route - I'm not a great
fan of Wi-Fi - I use it, but don't trust it for many reasons (not
security related either!)

If it's just working from home, then there are DECT phones which have
both an analogue interface _and_ a SIP/VoIP interface. So you could
equip the home office with one of these, have more handsets connected to
it, configured to use the home BT line, but the office one configured to
use the VoIP line, via the Broadband connection. The siemens ones make
it trivial to switch between the VoIP line and the analog line too. See

http://www.provu.co.uk/siemens.html

I've deployed quite a few C460IPs.

If the aim is to have one phone for everything (the holy grail!), then
how about a soft-phone that runs on the PC/Laptop, and you then use a
bluetooth headset to talk to the laptop, which can also (at the same
time) talk to a mobile phone? I'm not 100% convinced with these yet,
but...

https://www.ukheadsets.co.uk/thc-pl..._mode-cat_click

Looks promising ...

Good luck!

Gordon
--
www.drogon.net

Brian A

2007-10-29, 7:33 am

On Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:29:18 GMT, Dennis Ferguson
<dcferguson@pacbell.net> wrote:

>On 2007-10-27, kevin bailey < kbailey@freewayproje
cts.com> wrote:
>
>I'll guess about 5 kB per second in each direction, 10 kB/s total
>assuming they are counting bytes in both directions. That would
>make a 1 minute call cost about 0.6 MB.
>
>This is what I measured, anyway. You really need to test this
>yourself to be sure since it depends on things which can vary with
>the setup, like the codec in use.
>
>Dennis Ferguson
This site has a 'bandwidth' calculator.
http://www.erlang.com/calculator/lipb/

---
Remove 'no_spam_' from email address.
---

Dennis Ferguson

2007-10-29, 12:33 pm

On 2007-10-29, Brian A < no_spam_bca1000@hotm
ail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:29:18 GMT, Dennis Ferguson
><dcferguson@pacbell.net> wrote:
> This site has a 'bandwidth' calculator.
> http://www.erlang.com/calculator/lipb/

That works. My numbers were for a G.729 codec sending a packet
every 10 milliseconds. The calculator comes up with 40 kbps,
the same as I measured.

Dennis Ferguson

Brian A

2007-10-30, 7:33 am

On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:38:45 GMT, Dennis Ferguson
<dcferguson@pacbell.net> wrote:

>On 2007-10-29, Brian A < no_spam_bca1000@hotm
ail.com> wrote:
>
>That works. My numbers were for a G.729 codec sending a packet
>every 10 milliseconds. The calculator comes up with 40 kbps,
>the same as I measured.
>
>Dennis Ferguson
I agree with your calculations but that is for one voice channel only.
If you had 2 voice channels (talk each way) that would be 80kb/s which
would work out at 2 x 0.6MB over 1 minute.... or have I missed
something.
---
Remove 'no_spam_' from email address.
---

Dennis Ferguson

2007-10-30, 3:33 pm

On 2007-10-30, Brian A < no_spam_bca1000@hotm
ail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:38:45 GMT, Dennis Ferguson
><dcferguson@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
> I agree with your calculations but that is for one voice channel only.
> If you had 2 voice channels (talk each way) that would be 80kb/s which
> would work out at 2 x 0.6MB over 1 minute.... or have I missed
> something.

40 kilobits per second (kbps) is 5 kilobytes per second (kB/s). That's
for one direction, so two directions is 10 kB/s (80 kbps), or 600 kB per
minute, or 0.6 MB per minute.

I think the confusion might be bits verus bytes. The calculator
produces bits per second, but the mobile company counts bytes so
you need to divide by 8 somewhere.

Dennis Ferguson

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