I posted a detailed analysis of wi-fi call latency on my Republic Wireless phone. I quantified the lag by recording both ends of a call from my landline and measuring the time between me speaking and when the sound came from the handset speaker. I typically heard between 300 and 450 ms of delay. Interestingly, it’s asymmetrical with landline-to-cell latency consistently 150 ms higher.
Another VERY interesting result which I didn’t discuss much in the article is that calling from cell to landline gets about the same latency as calling from landline to cell … as long as you stay on wi-fi. But if you handover to the cell network, then calling cell to landline drops the latency to near zero but the reverse keeps the higher latency. This result may be due to Republic’s implementation that actually uses two phone numbers for incoming calls to the cell phone and routes voice between them, while outgoing calls just use the quasi-secret second number and not your primary number.
http://chrisdolan.net/talk/2013/12/04/measuring-wifi-calling-latency/
P.S. click through to the article to hear a 30-second MP3 of me saying “Test… Test…” to myself. The interesting part is that the lag is very obvious to your ear in that recording.
I was curious about my network performance vs yours, but not so curious as to run unsigned java applets from strangers on the interwebz.
This information is great. Have you noticed any improvement since?
Jean Souza Nope, just as bad as ever. But surprisingly, I haven’t found any other Republic users screaming as loudly as I’ve been about this. So, I’ve been wondering if it’s something specific to me (although I thought I’d ruled out all of the local explanations)
Chris Dolan It’s not just you. I did notice improvements once I switched from Defy to Moto X. I still hear the delay on Wifi. Some days are better than others. That’s why I found your post.
Seems like WiFi although have a lot of bandwidth still suffers from a lot of latency. Would it be my internet providers or router to blame?
In my own case, I believe that I disproved my ISP/router as the root cause because I reproduced the latency in three locations: home, work, and a friend’s house. Also, I don’t experience the same latency with Skype or G+ hangout, which go over the same WiFi.
True thing. I forgot about Hangouts and Skype. They do work fine. In this case we can confirm the issue is at Republic.