If you’re planning to try Voicent’s Agent Dialer predictive dialer or BroadcastByPhone auto-dialer, you may be wondering how much bandwidth you’ll need.

Generally, for each VOIP channel/line you have or want (think of a channel as the equivalent of an old-fashioned phone line), you’ll need 128 Kbps of both download and upload bandwidth.

You may have never noticed, but the upload speed of your Internet connection, which allows you to send data, is often different from the download speed, which you use to browse the web and to download files.

Voicent’s predictive dialer and auto-dialer tools, as well as its PBX Flex solution, provide two-way voice connections. That means you need the ability to both send and receive data (in this case, voice) in order to use the software.

Let’s say you want a 6-channel system and your ISP (Internet Service Provider) tells you that you have a 1.5 Mbps (Mega bit per second) download speed and 512 Kbps (= 0.512 Mbps) upload speed.

Your download speed would be able to support up to 12 channels, but the upload speed would limit your number of channels to 4 (512/128 = 4).

If you need it, you can usually call your ISP and ask them to increase your upload bandwidth.

By the way, none of this applies if you’re using physical phone lines for calls or if you’re broadcasting SMS (text) messages. SMS calls are made through a GSM modem using your cell phone company’s cellular network.