Seriously struggling with zoom phones

[rfein]

We are a company of 25 staff, many of whom work with clients and need their phones on the go. We switched to zoom phones about 6 months ago and have been struggling intensely. Calls get dropped, missed, audio is inconsistent, voicemail notifications with a major delay until they actually appear... We've dug deep into the settings and a few things have helped, but nothing has solved the issue. The only thing that seems to potentially explain it is that we need very strong Internet connection to use the phones, it can't rely on phone data. We aren't receiving error messages, just extremely poor performance. I'm wondering if zoom phones are good for people who are primarily desk bound? Customer support comes back with the same auto responses with every ticket: send a screenshot. The issue that we can't screenshot what's not happening or capture the poor performance. Are others having these issues? Thank you.

[Eliot]

hi rfein,

sorry for your struggle with zoom phone.

have you had an opportunity to look at Viewing the Zoom Phone quality of service dashboard?  this may help pin point the cause of your issues.

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0070057

zoom phone uses the opus codec which is the same codec used by many of the cell phone companies.  it can work under less than perfect network conditions.

a few ideas.

1.  do you use any desk phones using a wired connection to your local area network?  if so, do you experience any zoom phone issues?  if you experience any issues with these desk phones, i suggest running zoom network connectivity tool to see is happening on your network.

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0058114

2.  i am not a good example of using poor cell data.  i use tmobile for my cell.  at least in las vegas, we get more than 100 mbps down and 10 mbps up.  in my house, i get 435 mbps down and 13 mbps up with 12 ms jitter and no packet loss.  here is a screen shot from my iphone 14 promax of spedtest detailed results.

however, when my wife visited new york city, the only way i could reach her in her hotel room was to call the hotel front desk. 

my suggestion is to install speedtest by ookla on your cell phones and run speedtest at the time these cell phones are experiencing issues. 

in the past, i was having trouble when trying to use cell data near my house and i called tmobile.  tmobile told me that one of their 5g cell towers was down and i was automatically connected to a 4g tower further away  from my house. 

another issue with cell data is that cell phone companies give priority to cell calls over cell data. 

my suggestion is to run a couple of speedtests and call your cell phone company with the results.  sometimes, the cell phone company has to reset your network connections on their side and will ask you to reset your cell phone.  on my iphone, i had to go to settings->transfer or reset iphone->reset->reset network settings.  unfortunately, this wipes out your wifi network settings and passwords but it fixed the problem that i was having.

3.  zoom phone has a option to switch a call to your phone carrier.  note that this option is charged per minute.

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0067457

Did my response answer your question? If so, please don't forget to mark the reply as an accepted solution.

thanks,  eliot

[PaulBoatBuild]

We have a similar issue. We use Starlink for our data which provides a connection speed of between 100 and 200mbps, with upload speeds of 15mbps upwards. We have a pretty simple network set-up, Starlink router, and a number of switches for connecting all our devices, and maybe 14 staff with just 5 phone numbers. When I originally spoke to the sales guy at Zoom, it was suggested that very low transmission rates were required for phone calls. We have two Yealink handsets and also use WiFi mobiles with the Zoom App for connecting and regularly have issues with poor call quality. Often the caller can hear us perfectly well but their speech is either garbled or very slow and conversation is impossible. There is never any indication on the Zoom dashboard of issues. I report calls issues via the app, but am struggling to see how to raise a ticket for this problem which is becoming frustrating. Would appreciate advice on that. We typically end up calling people back on our mobile phones using our personal call packages with no issue. There are some great features on Zoom Phone, but the call quality is a real let down and has the potential to lose us business, so I need to get it sorted. Looking at the page regarding the "quality of service dashboard", that doesn't seem to exist for our business account and there just appears to be no way of reporting faults through the web site, unless I'm missing something. 

[Eliot]

Hi paulboatbuild,

Starlink, on paper, looks like a good solution but may be affected by obstructions such as trees and buildings, weather such as heavy rain, snow or cloud cover, network congestion and starlink equipment placement.  You may want to talk to starlink to see what stats they have for your connection and what they recommend to improve network performance.  You can ask how quality of service (QOS) is supported to prioritize Zoom Phone traffic.

Please also consider implementing quality of service on your local area network to prioritize Zoom Phone traffic.

Implementing Quality of Service for Zoom Phone

If you have a business or education plan, you can use zoom phone qos dashboard.

Viewing the Zoom Phone quality of service dashboard

If I am reading your description correctly, sometimes the call quality is okay but often it is not.  This may indicate something is occurring locally and or on the network.  Local large file downloads and uploads and streaming can consume a lot of bandwidth.  The fact the callers can hear you perfectly (upload works well) but you cannot hear callers well (download may be not be working well or network is overloaded by streaming or file transfers).  Networks experiencing overloading may drop packets which are retransmitted later.  This works well for streaming and file transfers but not for real time voice and video. I experienced a problem where users were complaining about poor internet connections, and it turned out a user was constantly downloading movies and streaming.

I suggest testing your starlink connection both during business hours and outside of business hours to see what upload and download speeds, latency, jitter and packet loss you have.  Some free tools include download versions of ookla speedtest  and  Speed Test by Measurement Lab.  PingPlotter is one low cost tool with more features and a free trial Test Your Network for Free Today | PingPlotter.  You can also use windows Start CMD Ping to see latency and packet loss.  Ping has options to do a continuous ping -t.  With continuous ping on, you can see real time latency and packet loss.

Since cell phones work in your area, you could explore 5G internet services from carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon and you may have other options such as internet service providers (ISP) such a local cable company or fiber based ISP.

Zoom has some built-in network testing tools.  Please see support articles

Zoom Network Connectivity Tool

Simulating VoIP calls using the network tool (zoom.com)

Please see your zoom support options based on your account profile.

Getting Help from Zoom Support | Contact Us

Did my response answer your question? If so, please don't forget to mark the reply as an accepted solution.

thanks,  eliot

[PaulBoatBuild]

Hi Elliot. 

Thank you very much for your comprehensive reply. I'll have a go at the various speed testing options. We have zero obstructions here, having a Starlink on a aluminium pole which is high enough to avoid anything. Therefore the speed of the Starlink router to the internet tends to be in excess of 100mbps. One thing I've notice since I posted the message and based on what you've said is that I may need to alter the connections of our Yealink base unit to be directly to the main switch, currently it's connected to actually a third switch which is likely to be causing an issue relating to the number of devices connected. I think therefore the issue is more likely to way the internal connectivity is set-up, rather than Starlink.

Thanks for you advice. I'll try out a number of solutions together with the testing based on what you've said. I'm pretty certain that I'll be able to resolve the issue now. 

Regards, Paul.