Users in a remote location are complaining of "choppy" audio or of audio cutting out. What is a likely cause for this issue?

Static interference is a characteristic of analog circuit-switched telephony and does not apply to digital packet-based VoIP networks.

A voice codec mismatch typically results in a complete failure to establish audio during call setup negotiation, not intermittent or choppy audio mid-call.

Acoustic feedback between a phone's speaker and microphone produces echo or howling noise, not choppy or cutting-out audio.

VoIP audio is carried over real-time UDP streams where dropped packets cannot be retransmitted - when excessive packet loss occurs on a congested or unreliable WAN link, the receiving endpoint cannot reconstruct the full audio stream, producing choppy or cutting-out audio. Remote locations are especially vulnerable because they rely on limited-bandwidth WAN circuits that can become congested and begin dropping packets under load.