Does quality vary amongst hosted pbx providers?

I'm going to address this question in terms of how the voice quality fares among hosted providers.

The quality of hosted providers varies significantly and depends on how large the hosted company is/what regions are covered by the provider as well as the type of voice and data packages that are offered.

I suggest looking into hosted providers that offer nationwide support or are well known in a specific state or region. When evaluating different hosted PBX providers, it is important to ask about their data centers. Larger companies usually have several different data centers located in various areas of the state or the nation for redundancy purposes. If one of the servers fails, your service will be automatically routed to another up and running data center. Companies that are smaller sometimes don't have the infrastructure or money to support several different sites so making sure that they are both reliable and redundant is something to look out for.

Voice quality also depends on how much bandwidth you have supporting your phones. Companies who use hosted VoIP usually use a T1 or fractured T1 to run their phones lines over as it ensures there is enough bandwidth to support all of the phones. Whichever company you sign with will perform a speed test to make sure that the bandwidth you have at your company can support both data and voice traffic. If your bandwidth is insufficient, the hosted provider will make recommendations accordingly.

If you are worried about loss of data packets that causes jitter or delay, I would also look into either a bundled or managed hosted solution. These companies are a one-stop shop for all of your IT needs and provide hardware on site as well as off site. If you are worried about voice quality and want a system that is hands on, then a managed solution is definitely something you want to take a closer look at.

I hope this helps!