With some mobile operators preferring to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to VoiP in the mobile arena, Tony Dennis looks at the technology now available to make it happen.
Thanks to its initial inferior voice call quality, VoIP (Voice over IP) became a technology which many mobile network operators wished would simply go away. Times have changed, however, and the latest VoIP handsets offer a call quality which is indistinguishable from cellular.
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Rather than merely ignoring the threat, some observers argue mobile operators can respond effectively by migrating their networks rapidly towards IMS [IP Multimedia Subsystem] and offering VoIP over their 3/3.5G based networks.
VoIP handsets
Across Europe, the existence of high quality VoIP software has led several communications companies to offer VoIP handsets that connect calls via WiFi hotspots or a broadband wireless router (WLAN). Provider’s like the UK’s BT, for example, sees itself competing head-on with the mobile networks. It intends to cover the major UK conurbations with wireless hotspots – thereby providing its customers with a VoIP handset which is truly ‘mobile’. The latest Fusion WiFi handset is not merely confined to the home as was the case with the original (Bluetooth) version of BT’s Fusion service.
“Over 60 per cent of mobile calls are made indoors – at home, in the office, at railways stations and airports. We believe this is an underserved market in terms of good low-cost access to the Internet,” commented BT’s head of mobility and convergence, Steve Andrews. He added, “I think we’ll see mass market adoption for BT Fusion over the next 12 months.”
In many ways providers like BT are treading the tried and tested route which was taken with the original CT2 networks like Rabbit and Mercury Phonepoint – except with Fusion, subscribers can receive as well as make calls.
Using technologies like UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access), services like BT Fusion are effectively replacing DECT cordless phones with WiFi cordless phones that are also able to ‘roam’. Tage Rasmussen, CEO with Danish supplier, RTX, believes that DECT isn’t dead quite yet. “We believe that Wi-Fi phones are still immature compared to our Dualphone handset for Skype. Why? Because it uses DECT which is more reliable – having no interference problems with other wireless devices unlike WiFi and Bluetooth,” he explained.
“It offers more as a two-in-one telephone for both Skype (VoIP) and ordinary (PSTN) land lines which is better because the Dualphone is capable of making emergency calls.”
A very different approach to DECT is being taken by providers such as N9uf (Neuf Cegetel) and Free in France; Mobiboo in the UK and T-One (Deutsche Telekom) in Germany. These companies are offering dedicated dual mode handsets which support both WiFi and GSM. These dual mode handsets are introducing a number of new players into the cellular arena. For example, the handsets are being manufactured by companies previously unknown in the GSM/cellular space.
In the UK Mobiboo is selling the Tovo dual-mode handset – which is actually the Pirelli DualPhone DP-L10 – through the leading supermarket chain, Tesco. The DualPhone is being sold in France by Free while its rival, N9uf, utilises the GW1 from WNC (Wistron Neweb Corp). Significantly, the WNC product is being re-badged as the V-Click by one of the major players in the WiFi space, D-Link. It wasn’t just the hardware which introduced new players, either.
The VoIP software used by the first dual mode phones ran on Texas Instruments’ popular OMAP processors and was provided by India’s HelloSoft. CEO Krishna Yarlagadda commented, “Our VoIP phone application on the OMAP1710 will assist OEM/ODMs [manufacturers] in their next generation handset designs to support dual mode functionality such as converged VoWLAN (Voice over WLAN) or VoIP support over GSM/GPRS/3G.”
A third approach is to utilise WiFi enabled smartphones from the leading handset vendors such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson – who already have models commercially available. Other leading vendors such as Motorola, LG and Samsung have either announced or are known to be planning WiFi enabled handsets too. These models can then be loaded with VoIP client software.
Such a move has been resisted by some network operators such as Vodafone which shipped the Nokia N80 WiFi enabled handset with the VoIP client software absent. It’s unclear what will happen if consumers start downloading the VoIP client software themselves. Will the VoIP traffic be blocked? Will the warranties become invalid?
Business apps
VoIP isn’t a facility that just appeals to consumers – it has obvious business applications, too. At Nokia Featured Developer, WiFiMobile CEO Gerry O’Prey, claimed, “Dual mode phones like the Nokia E-series (right) are great for businesses as through VoIP they hand back call control to enterprises via their switchboards (PABXs ).”
WiFiMobile claims its OneFone software is simply the first IP multimedia [IMS] service that can be offered equally well as a VoIP service over cellular as it can over WiFi. O’Prey added, “Thanks to WiFi and VoIP, a handset user can be located anywhere in the world where there is a WiFi connection and the user can still answer his or her switchboard extension.”
Indeed, roaming is one of two main areas where VoIP/WLAN represents a major threat to traditional cellular operators, argued Matthew Heath, md with Mobiboo.
“Roaming is the key area,” he explained. “Not only does roaming generate huge revenues but it also creates a major slice of operators’ profits.” Heath estimated that as much as 15 to 20 per cent of an operator’s profit can be derived from roaming fees. With VoIP solutions, however, roaming is defunct because not matter where the user is geographically located, calls cost the same.
“This could potentially have a huge impact on revenues. Particularly as consumers are growing increasingly more aware of the true cost of roaming,” he added.
Further bad news from an operator perspective is that subscribers are becoming increasingly aware of the costs incurred when roaming. “Customers are ever more frequently in range of a broadband connected WiFi access point – meaning they can make free or very low-cost calls using VoIP,” claimed Roland Hanbury, product director with VoIP provider, Truphone. “Typically this saves customers 50 per cent or more on their mobile phone bills, especially if they do any travel abroad.”
Thanks to the proliferation of Wi-Fi access points in homes, offices, and commercial hotspots – access to a VoIP service is becoming increasingly easier, he maintained.
“Some 60 per cent of the average user’s ‘mobile’ phone calls are made from just two locations which typically correspond to home and office,” argued Hanbury. “Perhaps 50 per cent of offices now have WiFi and an ever-increasing number of homes do so too.”
Other major threat
Besides VoIP, the other major threat to cellular operators from WiFi has been termed CoIP (Content over IP). In essence CoIP enables content to be downloaded to a mobile handset at speeds to which broadband users have already become accustomed. Heath claimed that he’s already seen WiFi enabled handsets experience genuine download speeds of around 5 Mbit/s which is at least 15 times faster than the standard 384 Kbit/s which 3G can offer. At such rates, WAP based services suddenly deliver services which consumers expected from them seven years ago.
However, most handset owners will want to view content from the regular Internet rather than WAP. The catch is that consumers want to pay for this ‘broadband’ capability the same way as they do for a fixed line service – via flat rates. So Heath revealed his company will soon be offering its mobile phone users what he describes as ‘buffet’ tariffs because they provide subscribers with an ‘all-you-can-eat’ data tariff for a fixed price. Indeed, some cellular operators – such as Vodafone and 3 – have already responded to this threat with fixed price data tariffs over their existing 3G networks.
The worst case scenario predicted by many analysts is that VoIP will bring about the death of voice call tariffs as the industry currently knows them. As WiFiMobile’s O’Prey put it, “A GSM network, like any other SS7 network, is inherently more expensive than modern packet switched (IP) networks. This means that circuit switched voice cannot compete with VoIP in the long-term. Consequently VoIP will always be less expensive to provide whether on a per minute cost or unlimited subscription basis.”
He added, “The mobile world has recognised this and is moving their networks towards IMS. It is important that operators like 3 UK (in the form of its X Series plan) have recognised that the future for cellular is to offer a broadband pipe to the subscriber over which IMS services can be deployed.”
Who’s afraid of VoIP?
“The pure cellular companies [such as Vodafone] are the most afraid of VoIP,” suggested Louis Corrigan, CTO with Irish VoIP handover software supplier, Accuris. “Conversely the traditional PTTs are the most enthusiastic about it. They view VoIP as a way of winning back the ‘voice call minutes’ which in recent years they’ve steadily been losing to the cellular operators.”
Truphone’s Roland Hanbury also thinks that, “Traditional operators can’t easily match ‘Internet-rate’ prices, and cannot block traffic over the internet, so there is little that they can do to stop the new entrants.”
Hanbury added, “There are several operators who offer a basic outbound mobile VoIP service, but a complete service requires both outbound and inbound voice and outbound and inbound text messages. In the medium term, mobile VoIP requires an Internet connection, which means that providers such as Truphone will be able to offer a variety of community, communication and multimedia services to supplement voice revenue.” He continued, “There’s a very healthy future for the ‘true’ (all-IP) VoIP providers even as voice rates fall.”
He predicts that these new network operators will continue to develop new WiFi enabled services in addition to voice. These services will include email over WiFi, Instant Messaging [IM], SMS over IP, music download, gaming, video on demand, and location-independent TV.
The inescapable conclusion is that while the cost of rolling out 3/3.5G networks is coming down, WiFi provides an interim solution for VoIP. As Gerry O’Prey believes, “Cellular operators need to start providing IMS services right now and VoIP needs to be part of them.” Martin Heath agrees, “The cellular operators are taking an Ostrich-like approach to VoIP and sticking their heads in the sand. They adopted the same mindset towards VoIP as the fixed line operators did ten years ago. That’s fine by me because the longer they take to react the better it is for my business.”
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