The role of WiFi in Teams call qualty:
Poor Teams call quality can significantly disrupt productivity and frustrate users. While various factors can contribute to these issues, unreliable WiFi is a common culprit. As more and more people work remote and offices are designed to accommodate flexible workspaces, a large majority of Teams calls now occur over WiFi networks. This means that indentifying subpar WiFi networks has now become a major factor in Teams call quality disruptions.
Most organizations prioritize reliable WiFi networks and invest in optimal office setups. However, even well-configured networks can run into issues over time or experience variations in performance across different locations and users. Factors such as physical layout, interior wall modifications, and distance from access points among others, can impact signal strength, call quality, and even result in WiFi dead spots.
The bonus Challenge: Home networks
Beyond office WiFi, ensuring reliable connections for remote and hybrid workers presents significant challenges for IT departments across the board. With more and more employees working remotely, IT teams are faced with a diverse range of home networks and shared workspaces that may not be under direct corporate control but do impact call quality and productivity.
While most office networks are professionally setup, home networks are often limited to users plugging in ISP-provided routers and ignoring them until they fail. After all, it is generally not the user’s role to be a WiFi expert, but it is their responsibility to arrange for an adequate and stable home office and internet connection if they want to work from home. So being able to identify potential problematic or subpar WiFi networks, both in the office as well as in remote settings, is crucial.
Why WiFi Matters for Teams Calls
Teams calls require specific network characteristics beyond those needed for other services and browsing. Factors like bandwidth, signal strength (RSSI), Signal error rate, Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), and volatility all influence call quality in different ways. Microsoft requires certain standards and will not even look at anything else if they see that the used network falls short.
Introducing OfficeExpert TrueDEM Reports: Proactive Remediation
Our new TrueDEM reports empower admins to gain insights into the performance of all used WiFi networks as well as their impact on Teams calls. By identifying users with consistently poor WiFi connections, admins can:
- Prioritize network improvements: Identify impacted networks and users with the most significant call quality deterioration due to WiFi issues. Both managed & unmanaged.
- Proactive outreach: Help users understand how their home network affects their call quality and suggest improvement strategies.
- Verification of Home Office Networks: Ensure remote users have adequate home office WiFi connections for effective UC communication and Teams calls.
Remediation can be as simple as resetting or updating routers, moving closer to access points or upgrading their home networks but without insights into the problems, many users just suffer in silence or blame it on other things.
An example…
In the above example, we see that Aliah uses multiple WiFi networks that score quite differently. The NETGEAR20-5G WiFi, which he used for nearly half the calls in the last 2 weeks, is clearly not doing as well as the other NETGEAR20 and iPhone hotspot he uses. Opening the call lists for the different networks we can inspect what was going on and identify the problem.
In this case the RSSI for the NETGEAR20-5G was bad and outbound volatility was high whereas inbound volatility was quite stable/flat. This can be due to interference, distance to the router, WiFi channel congestion, frequency band, etc. However, this isn’t the same for all calls which could indicate that it’s related to the distance to his router. Aliah most likely works in different rooms or places in his house and moving closer to his router might help resolve the issue.
An added clue here is the “5G” in the network name. This could indicate that it refers to a network using the 5Ghz frequency. WiFi networks using the 5Ghz frequency tend to be more susceptible for quality deterioration when you’re not in close range to the router than the 2.4Ghz.
Optimize Your Teams Call Quality with TrueDEM
Empower your IT team to proactively address WiFi-related call quality issues like the one above. OfficeExpert TrueDEM reports provide valuable insights to ensure seamless communication across your organization.
TrueDEM Reports Offer:
- User Identification: Pinpoint users that consistently rely on subpar WiFi networks for Teams calls.
- Network Analysis: Analyze key metrics like bandwidth, signal strength, and volatility for identified networks.
- Impact Assessment: Understand how specific WiFi networks contribute to call quality issues and qualify the ones with the biggest impact based on number of users and number of calls those users make.
- Results Measurement: Track the effectiveness of remediation actions through ongoing monitoring.
Ready to learn more about how TrueDEM can optimize your Teams call quality? Contact us and let’s talk!
