Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Mobile World Congress Coverage

We are in the throes of Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona. The sun’s been shining, the transit strike was averted and the crowds are huge.

We were pleased to see news of our Smart VoIP made it into the GSMA’s MWC show daily (see page 6).

In case you missed it, we also got coverage for the Smart VoIP announcement in PC World, GigaOm, Fierce Broadband Wireless and a few other places.

See our Smart VoIP announcement.

Friday, February 24, 2012

A Wi-Fi Renaissance

Total Telecom reported today that Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) predicted that seamless WiFi offloading solutions will begin deployment within the next 12 months.

"The complementary relationship between WiFi and mobile networks is finally becoming a reality," said WBA’s Chairman Chris Bruce.

With Kineto’s software, it’s been a reality for some time. For years, we’ve been focused on the opportunity for mobile operators who recognize the benefits of Wi-Fi for offload and coverage.

Reporter Lewis Dowling mentioned T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi Calling service based on our Smart Wi-Fi technology as an example of an operator solutions that successfully use Wi-Fi. He also mentioned steps Cisco, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent are taking to enable this operator shift.

Bruce added: "Fixed and mobile operators alike are leading a WiFi hotspot renaissance in a renewed effort to sate the seemingly unquenchable desire for ubiquitous broadband connectivity.”

The smartphone deluge has been going on for years already and is only growing. Operators need to try to get out in front of it. With Wi-Fi, they can.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Over-the-Top VoIP Application for Mobile Operators

At Kineto, our goal has always been to give the mobile operator more tools and capabilities for their core services. That was the imperative behind our new Smart VoIP, announced today.

Smart VoIP is the first VoIP application specifically developed to enable mobile operators to leverage their existing network infrastructure to offer a competitive over-the-top (OTT) voice service.

It is intended to be like a downloadable VoIP service, but is tied to the operator’s own baseline voice service. Instead of it being completely independent of the mobile voice, our app integrates with the cellular voice service.

The app supports a range of standard mobile telephony capabilities and is designed to run on major mobile operating systems, including iPhone®, Android® and Windows Mobile®. It can be branded by mobile operators and downloaded to subscribers through standard application stores. Now, a user can dial a number and choose to complete the call over cellular or via the OTT VoIP app (over Wi-Fi or 3G/LTE).

It's a fact that mobile users (so that means pretty much everyone) are using VoIP apps on their smartphones. This results in mobile operators losing minutes.

Rather than missing out on the revenue completely, some service providers see value in developing their own OTT VoIP app that can get these savvy users back on their network. AT&T recently launched "Call International," and O2 in the UK announced they were going to trial a service from their VoIP group Jajah.
The demand is there.

Smart VoIP is one more tool we think operators need to compete.

Read the Smart VoIP press release.
Read the Smart VoIP application web page.  
Read the coverage in PC World.




What do you think?