Every VoIP call has 3 parts… the call signal, the inbound audio, and the outbound audio.
A common issue is when the first 2 parts work, but the outbound audio has quality issues.
In particular, your outbound voice may pause, skip, sound garbled, glitchy, scratchy, or something like a robot.
When this happens, especially if the inbound audio is still good, then you know you are running out of “upload” bandwidth.
You may have enough upload bandwidth for your calls, but you may not have enough upload bandwidth for your calls, plus some hungry app or device on your network.
Check for anything that uses upload bandwidth, such as the following…
– Online backup, Carbonite, etc.
– Cloud drive services, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc
– Security cams, nanny cams, video chat, etc
– Video and Media Streaming services, Netflix, Hulu, etc
– VPN and Remote Desktop apps, screen sharing, remote meetings
– Cloud Apps, like Office 360, Google Apps, etc
If you suspect something, try temporarily disabling it, or turning it off, to see if voice quality improves.
Once you identify the cause, you can set a schedule or throttle within the app or device, or use your router’s QoS features to set limits, or give priority to voip devices.
You can also contact your internet provider to upgrade bandwidth. But hungry apps will likely eat whatever bandwidth you have available. So setting schedules and throttles is a better option.