Twilio’s Voice Insights lets developers manage WebRTC call quality in apps

Cloud communications provider Twilio cares about call quality, as a good customer experience is essential if it wants to succeed in disrupting the telecommunications space. Today, Twilio is announcing the beta launch of an analytics offering called Voice Insights that lets developers manage WebRTC calls and programmatically adjust their apps to provide the best quality possible.

The release comes on the same day Twilio is announcing it has entered into an agreement to acquire Kurento’s WebRTC media server technology.

Web Real-Time Communication, or WebRTC, is a standard of communication protocols and APIs enabling peer-to-peer conversations. To date, Twilio claims that its platform has handled more than a billion minutes of this type of call, which has allowed the team to learn “a lot about network and device variances that affect call quality.” While Twilio has had internal metrics around network performance, those are now being made available to customers directly, something Patrick Malatack, vice president of product management, said will ensure “developers have the information they need to build highly performant applications.”

Previously, when developers experienced call quality issues, it was nearly impossible to diagnose whether the problem was with the network, a carrier, or even Twilio itself. “We built Voice Insights to allow customers to self-diagnose what was going on during the call — whether it was poor Wi-Fi, slow network connections, faulty headset, or even misconfigured microphone settings,” Malatack explained. The expectation is that with additional information, developers can adjust the app experience for their users at the individual call level and in aggregate.

Metrics available in this offering include latency, jitter, audio input and output, received packets lost, and mean opinion score (MOS).

Developers will be able to trigger certain actions based on Voice Insights with this feature. For example, a developer could program the app so that if you’re having a real-time call with a customer care center through a browser or app, and Twilio senses a problem, it could display a diagnostic message, such as “check headset connection” or “poor network coverage.”

The application doesn’t have to be situational either — since it’s analytics-based, developers will be able to study the data of each call while it’s taking place and see how it’s reflected in the caller feedback. Over the long-term, developers and companies can review the performance of WebRTC calls among their various Android and iOS apps, carriers, and connections to highlight problems and find solutions.

Voice Insights currently only supports Twilio’s Programmable Voice Client, but it’s believed that this analytics tool will extend to other products in the future. The service is available starting at $0.004 per call minute, and every Twilio customer using version 1.3 or later of its client can enable Voice Insights through the Twilio Console.