When we look back to everything that happened in the year 2020, we will undoubtedly remember the coronavirus pandemic and how it impacted our lives. An interesting aspect of the pandemic, particularly as it extended through the holiday season, is that it brought about a sharp increase of traditional voice communications, which for the most part, were handled by Voice over Internet Protocol systems.

Trends in VoIP Usage Since the Pandemic

Prior to the pandemic, VoIP systems were registering lower volumes of voice calls as people switched to communications methods such as instant messaging, video calls, email, and social media conversations. Once SARS-CoV-2 was confirmed to have reached a pandemic status in March, we started to spend more time at home, and we decided that this was a good time to pick up the phone and talk to our friends, associates, and relatives. We also placed calls over networks such as Facetime and WhatsApp, but the return to voice calls did not go unnoticed by telecommunications providers.

The VoIP surge experienced during the pandemic was not limited to the U.S. A similar situation took place in Canada and the United Kingdom, but those two countries went through internet outages caused by overloaded servers and insufficient bandwidth. The U.S. infrastructure handling VoIP servers proved to be solid, especially when you take into account that many schools, universities, and businesses were taking up considerable bandwidth with long videoconferencing sessions. This goes to show that business owners in the High Desert should not be worried about Quality of Service (QoS) communications issues as long as their VoIP systems are properly configured.