illumy is all about keeping you connected. That’s why we rolled messaging, email, and phone into the illumy platform: so you can exchange chats 💬, send emails 📧, share files 📂, and place calls 🤙 right within the same window.
Plus, all of these communication methods work from anywhere with a data connection. If you’re on an i2 or i3 plan with voice service, you can say goodbye to roaming fees.
Here’s how to get the best possible call quality when you’re using illumy voice, no matter where in the world 🌎 you are.
Ensure your data speed is sufficient
illumy voice calls rely on a super-advanced audio coding-decoding (codec) technology called Opus. It’s a state of the art, full fidelity codec with ultra-low data consumption.
How low 😏? If you’re calling a mobile phone number or landline, a data speed of 100kbps should be sufficient for great-quality calls.
To put that number into context, the average American smartphone has a 53Mbps connection. That’s 530x 😲 what you’ll need.
Of course, you might not be able to get US-level data connections when you’re traveling. But even in East Timor, the nation with the world’s slowest mobile data in Speedtest’s global index, downloads still average 5Mbps: 50x what illumy demands.
Call the other person ‘on-net’ (illumy-to-illumy)
The real secret 🤫 to the best illumy call quality is to ensure the other person is also using illumy.
For these “on-net” calls, you only need a data connection of 24kbps (less than half that of a dial-up modem, if you remember those 😉).
Staying on-net doesn’t just decrease your data use — it also fully encodes your calls in Opus for true HD voice quality. It’s like the person is sitting 🗣 right next to you.
(Conventional telephones use the public switched telephone network, a.k.a. the PSTN, which still relies on an old-school narrowband codec known as G.711. In other words, you won’t get HD quality when you call a non-illumy phone number from illumy — but we do keep the illumy portion of your calls in HD.)
How good is Opus at boosting quality while decreasing data use? Just look at this graph.
We encourage you to try Opus for yourself by making an on-net illumy call. You’ll hear higher highs ⬆️ and lower lows ⬇️, compared to the narrowband codecs that most phones use. And you’ll consume way less data at the same time.
What if most of your calls are to non-illumy numbers? Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. illumy’s i2 plan provides unlimited off-net calls to numbers in the US 🇺🇸 and Canada 🇨🇦. The i3 plan includes unlimited off-net calling to 43 additional countries 🏁 for just a few extra dollars a month.
Interested? Check out illumy’s plan tiers here.
Happy dialing!
Photo by Daniel Fontenele on Unsplash.
