VoIP blogs have been filled with optimism lately about the prospects of mobile VoIP. Om Malik reports about this:
But two recent statements by carriers from different parts of the world are making me wonder if the mobile phone companies are softening their stance on mobile VoIP. Last week, Verizon went out of its way to highlight the fact that it had tested VoIP calling on its new 4G wireless network. (The other 4G wireless company, Clearwire, has warmed up to VoIP as well.)
His own analysis on the matter?
This attitude shift is good for mobile VoIP startups such as Truphone and Fring.
While this may be true, I believe it may only be viable in the short run. Once Mobile VoIP becomes interesting enough, carriers will simply provide their own solutions – some will be based on mobile VoIP startups, but I fear that most will be based on their own solutions or by employing solutions from larger enterprises such as Ericsson, Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens.
And the way to do that might end up being IMS.
While I have been contemplating for the past year if IMS is actually going to make it to market, or is it going to end up as hype that just faded away, there seems to be some real progress in the IMS area. Ravi Shankar gives the highlights of a new Infonetics Research Survey:
According to Infonetics Research Survey IMS Plans: Global Service Provider Survey, IMS technology is advancing from early-stage services to the next phase. With the introduction of IMS, there will be a fundamental shift from plain vanilla voice calling to rich multimedia calling( Video, Picture, message sharing ). Top three business drivers for deploying IMS include Opportunity to offer converged services, Availability of new applications/services and Network consolidation.
While this does spell some good news to Mobile VoIP as a service, it also paints a complicated future for mobile VoIP startups. It seems like their alternatives to success have been reduced to being purchased by carriers instead of trying to grow on their own.
IMS simply snuffs out the need for partisan mobile VoIP solutions and returns the power to the operators.
It will be interesting to see how this will play out.
Tags: enterprise, Fring, GigaOm, IMS, Infonetics, Media, Mobile, mobile phone, mobile VoIP, Nokia, Om Malik, operators, Ravi Shankar, Truphone, UC, Verizon, voice, VoIP
Comments and trackbacks
1. Ravi Shankar | September 3rd, 2009 at 4:14 am
Hi Tsahi:
Thanks for the link. I guess once IMS,LTE,WIMAX becomes a reality, all these Mobile VoIP applications should focus on the features rather than advertising them selves as a Mobile VoIP app. I guess the future is going to be more of SOIP (Service over IP), and the services provided by Mobile Apps are going to be key driver rather than the transport. From a user standpoint, he doesn’t care how the voice is being routed as long as the quality of service is good. Even if the operators use IP for routing voice traffic, they are not gone advertise that as a killer feature. The killer feature for them is going to be converged Rich multimedia applications.
Cheers,
Ravi
2. Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 3rd, 2009 at 10:10 am
Ravi,
You are definitely correct. Focusing on features more than on advertising should work better these days
I am not sure there is a “killer feature” or a “killer application” anymore. People want what they are used to and they want it mobile. The elusive part of customers purchasing a phone from one company, a service from a cellular operator and then another set of services from third parties that have downloadable clients for that specific phone seems a bit far fetched to me.
3. chema | January 9th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
IMS is a reality already from the point of view you’re writing here. You can’t buy anything on it because operators don’t see the business case (you have mentioned some reasons in previous posts: downloadable apps, etc.).
And: Big operators are buying VoIP companies for amounts bigger than your regular IMS procurement bids. That’s a sure sign that they feel uneasy about what their CTOs are proposing.
Perhaps you can fulfill IMS promises without IMS.
4. Tsahi Levent-Levi | January 19th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Chema,
I am not sure I agree with you – you can always fulfill promises of one technology with another one. The problem you face is when the time comes to interoperate and interact with other services.
As telephony as a whole is something that no one company can provide globally (and we as consumers wouldn’t want it that way), these service providers need to interoperate.
The do that today using PSTN or similar technologies, and it’s about time we move forward to all IP networks.
Doing that using proprietary technologies (and SIP for that matter is a bit proprietary, as everyone has its own flavor) is plain wrong. It will hold for the short term but will require moving to a fully fledged infrastructure down the road.
VoIP companies don’t have only the technologies – they have the know how and expertise of running an IP-based global telephony operation. I believe they are aquired for this reason and not simply as a replacement to IMS.
5. chema | January 19th, 2010 at 10:41 pm
Exactly: that’s what I see behind some acquistions: why invest on IMS when you can buy a VoIP player with the assets and know-how?
I am not saying that’s the right view, but I am sure it has played a part.
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