eli5 Why do internet calls such as WhatsApp sound clearer than normal cellular calls?

Question

eli5 Why do internet calls such as WhatsApp sound clearer than normal cellular calls?

In: 34

Answer 1

You may think that is true because that is all you have seen of the internet. But… There is a concept called “Quality of Service” (QoS).

The Quality of Service for phone calls is “shaped” differently. So where “the internet” focusses on not losing data (but you may have higher ping or ping differences), phone calls focus on low ping and low ping differences (jitter). That low ping and low jitter QoS is expensive. This results in phone companies making the phone call noisy (“low bandwidth”) in order to keep costs at bay.

These days, first world countries have pretty good internet with low ping and low jitter.