Hi…
just read an online article “Keeping Your Home Number Abroad: An Expatriate’s Guide”, and agree with the recommendations of the writer. Problem is, I am currently in Japan, and when I call a Japanese number, more often than not the conversations ends up rather choppy. I wonder why there is no SIP server in Asia (the countries with the best IT infrastructure, Taiwan, Korea, or Japan would be excellent choices).
And a second point: there appear to be only 2 companies in Japan that offer VOIP services that are not part of a package (“package” meaning something like the VOIP service you can get with NTT if you pay them for a physical line). One of those companies has not been accepting new clients for a long time, while the cheapest deal the other company offers is a plan (with one number) that costs more than US$50 a month - clearly a service that only a business can afford. I don’t know about Korea (can’t use the language), but another country where I spend time once in a while is Taiwan, and I have not found any VOIP service providers there (yet), either. (As an aside: would be grateful for affordable suggestions!)
If voip.ms had a server in Asia and could in that way provide regional connections with low latency and low package loss, they would be able to tap into a huge market (surely not only foreigners in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan wish for reliable AND affordable VOIP service, but many English speaking locals would be attracted, as well, and credit cards are now ubiquitous in those countries, so there are no banking issues to worry about).
Not asking for any special deals in exchange for this idea (LOL), just would like to be able to use VOIP.MS in Japan and Taiwan the way I am used to using it in North America. What do you say? 
Hello amateur
We greatly appreciate all the information provided. We have a clear understanding of the current state of VoIP in regions such as Asia and Japan based on your explanation.
We also comprehend the advantages of using servers located near users in the same region.Considering the significant impact of latency, it should be feasible to utilize our international servers for users in Japan to ensure good quality service.
If you encounter any issues with the service, we always recommend reaching out to our technical support team for assistance in verifying and diagnosing the service offered.
Please contact us via support@voip.ms or through a live chat session for further assistance.
Hi William,
thanks for the comments. For the time being I only have anectodal evidence, but a few years ago, before the big DDoS attack and the subsequent move to Cloudflare, my “from Japan - to Japan” connections appeared to work much better (but there are possibly other factors involved, such as different providers, etc., so I have no hard data except that recent phone calls did not work well).
I’ll do some more testing when possible and report reproducable issues to tech support.
Thanks!
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Have been doing some general tests (not using voip) to determine jitter, latency, packet loss, and speed at various times of the day, and although jitter is usually very low (less than 2%) and speed is most of the time consistent with the plan I use (around 4Mbps), the latency date I get for connections to North America and Europe seems to be over 300ms for much of the time (connections to Singapore and India tend to show lower latency, often as low as 100ms, even though that is nothing to brag about). The above is true for two completely different providers (one is a local company to which I am connected via cable, and the other one is NTT DoCoMo, whose network I access via 3G modem). When latency is around 300ms, VoIP connections tend to be choppy.
At times latency comes down quite a bit, and then VoIP connections are fine.
The test results suggest that the problem I have with poor call quality is the consequence of general congestion, with some or all of that occurring between Japan and the North American continent.
Today I switched all registrations from “amterdam1” to “sydney1” in order to see if that setup works better during periods of congestion. I’ll report more later…
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An update: It seems that since I switched servers the overall call quality has improved - there are still occasional periods of dropouts and once in a while we experience a sudden loss of one side’s audio and need to redial, but at least it is possible to have conversations now.
But at certain times (for example, during early Friday evenings) the local service can be so slow that nothing really works, and I am sure this is simply general congestion (too many people trying to use the available bandwidth at the same time).
An aditional update: once a week I typically make a call of at least 1 hour duration from where I am in Japan to another location in Japan, and during this week’s call there were no audio issues, and no redialing was required (I am still using the server “Sydney1”, which seems to be the best choice for my location).
This week I also did some tests using a VoIP provider based in Germany (and with their SIP server also located in that country), and the audio quality was really good. (With both providers I use the G.722 codec, and if I am not mistaken, many HD capable phones in Japan use the G.711.1 codec, which apparently gets nicely transcoded from/to G.722).EDITED: The information about the G.711.1 codec may be outdated - some sources suggest the commonly codec in Japan is now 3GPP EVS. Anyway, when using G.722 for calls to Japanese numbers, the voice quality is generally very good, with lows and highs well passed through.
In the near future I hope to do a more structured comparison test involving the two providers - “stay tuned”. 
Hello amateur,
We greatly appreciate all the effort and we also appreciate you sharing the information on the forum. Thank you.