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?
Showing posts with label O2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label O2. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Four Out of Five Agree: UMA for Femtocells
Before MWC, I wrote about the incredible amount of UMA-based femtocell news, calling it a ‘femto frenzy’ of activity.
Within the world of femtocells, there are a chosen few committed to the existing 3GPP UMA/GAN standard. All of the other systems/solutions are proprietary. The “UMA-enabled Femtocell” world consists of many key players:
- Solution provider NEC
- Solution provider Motorola
- Femtocell provider Ubiquisys
- Femtocell provider Motorola
- Femtocell provider Netgear
1. During MWC, pan-European mobile operator O2 announced they were conducting a femtocell trial with NEC.
2. Also during MWC, Scandinavian provider Telia announced a femtocell trial based with Motorola.
3. Then just this week, an article from Fierce Wireless editor Brian Dolan suggests that T-Mobile International will be trialing Ubiquisys femtocells with NEC.
4. Softbank in Japan has announced trials with nearly every supplier on the market, including Ubiquisys, NEC and Motorola.
5. The only other announced trial I’m aware of is Vodafone Group’s announcement to trial Alcatel/Lucent and Huawei, clearly not a UMA-based trial.
Unless I’m mistaken (which I’m sure you’ll to tell me if I am):
Four out of five femtocell trials include a UMA-based system.
This reminds me of the old Trident gum ad where “four out of five dentists agree…”
I attribute this to a couple of reasons:
- It works. Novel but true. UMA has been commercially deployed for more than two years.
- Operators actually want a standard interface. As much as Alcatel/Lucent, Huawei, and even Nokia/Siemens are trying to push their own proprietary approaches, the operators have had enough. They want an open, public standard interface for femtocells.
- UMA does more than one thing. After deploying a femtocell service, a mobile operator may want to add a fixed line VoIP service (like T-Mobile US). The same UMA infrastructure supports that, or dual-mode phones, or softmobiles.
Next, let's see if we can get to 9 out of ten...
[UPDATE MARCH 20] Good posted on ThinkFemto about a similar topic. I have a bit more detail. For some reason, ThinkFemto decided to throw in a bunch of picocell wins that ip.Access got, but they aren't femtocells.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
UMA-based Femtos on Trial
One of the big news items of this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) was femtocells. As
reported here, there was a ‘femto frenzy’ building in the market. Then on Monday, two UMA-based femtocell trial announcements hit the wire.
reported here, there was a ‘femto frenzy’ building in the market. Then on Monday, two UMA-based femtocell trial announcements hit the wire. The first was O2, announcing they are trialing a femtocell system from NEC. This was on the heels of NEC announcing their femtocell solution.
Second Telia announced plans for a femtocell trial to complement their Home Free dual-mode handset service. I recommend clicking through on the link, it’s an excellent way to work on your Swedish. Telia has been very aggressive in rolling out Home Free across Telia properties and has used a UMA-based solution from Motorola for some time.
I think UMA is starting to have an effect on the femtocell market. Clearly operators see the advantages (fastest time to market, fastest time to standards, robust, proven, investment protection for new FMC applications) and I’m certain there will be more UMA-based femtocell announcements to come.
Monday, October 01, 2007
UK Operators unleash ‘flat rate’ data plans
In the article, Richard Warmsley, head of internet at T-Mobile, comments that 500,000 people have signed up for their ‘web and walk’ service in 18 months. Mr. Warmsley goes on to add:
“Half of our customers surf the internet on their mobile when they are at home watching TV. They do not need to go to a laptop and fire it up. The mobile is there for them.”
Key take-away #1: As an operator, if 50% of your data traffic is generated at home, use Wi-Fi and UMA rather than the more expensive macro RAN.
Another interesting point in the article is that flat rate pricing apparently boosts downloads from an average of 0.18 megabytes to 0.60 megabytes, more than 3x in capacity.
Key take-way #2: Is your network ready for a 3x increase in data traffic/capacity, especially when 50% of that traffic is happening at home within range of Wi-Fi and could be off-loaded to broadband & IP?
There is a chart in the article which shows the different rates:
- T-Mobile - £7.50/month (1 GB limit)
- Vodafone - £7.50/month (120 MB limit)
- Orange - £8.00/month (30 MB limit)
- Three - £5/month (1 GB limit)
- O2 - £7.50/month (200 MB limit)
Key take away #3: As an operator, prices for flat rate data plans are going to come down. Clearly Three is already one third the price of the T-Mobile plan. Therefore, making massive capacity investments to support more traffic at less revenue per user is not ideal.
Wi-Fi, IP and broadband look more attractive all the time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)