T-Mobile Talks Up It's Wi-Fi Calling Advantage

At Mobile World Congress, T-Mobile’s Josh Lonn spent some time talking with several different editors about the company’s success with the Wi-Fi Calling service.

In Monica Alleven’s article “Wi-Fi Calling is Talk of the Town,” she quotes Mr. Lonn saying “We believe this is more effective [than femtocells].”

Mike Dano with Fierce Wireless wrote that T-Mobile has approximately 5 millions Wi-Fi Calling users today, with about 1.25 million on the new Android version of the service.

In Total Telecom’s piece, “Wi-Fi Offload?  There’s an app for that,” Mary Lennighan quotes Mr. Lonn saying: “We’re putting [coverage] on the device side rather than something that plugs into the wall.”

Network World’s Nancy Gohring’s trend piece on ‘small cells’ on femtocells and Wi-Fi covered both sides of the debate.  But T-Mobile’s quote hit the nail on the head. “Wi-Fi is robust.  Why do something as complicated as a femto?” questioned Mr. Lonn.

But it was TMoNews that really summed up the situation, writing “Personally, I believe T-Mobile hit a home run with the Wi-Fi Calling service over that of a femtocell.”

I couldn’t agree more.

MobiTV App Prohibited From Working over Wi-Fi

For mobile operators, there is an ugly truth about basic Wi-Fi offload that no one wants to talk about: the packet services you can collect revenue for can not be offload to IP, or worse yet, aren’t even accessible when Wi-Fi is on.

MobileCrunch writer Devin Coldewey covered the story of trying to run AT&T’s MobiTV service on his Android phone.

AT&T supports ‘basic’ Wi-Fi offload, which means the Wi-Fi radio dumps web traffic directly to IP, but must maintain a 3G connection for any operator hosted service.

But the problem with basic Wi-Fi offload is that revenue generating packet services, like MobiTV, can’t be offloaded to Wi-Fi because there’s no secure connection from the mobile core network to the smartphone. Whoops.

Smart Wi-Fi addresses this specific problem. Smart Wi-Fi creates that secure connection between the handset and the mobile core network so paid packet services like MobiTV (and visual voice mail, and MMS, etc…) can be delivered to the subscriber over Wi-Fi.

Throw in 3G data caps, and Smart Wi-Fi is better than sliced bread.

The operator wins two ways: first, they can continue to sell data services that actually make money, rather than simply transporting non-revenue generating YouTube traffic. Second, they can offload those valuable data services to Wi-Fi.

The subscriber wins two ways as well. First, they get access to the service over lightening fast Wi-Fi. Second, by using Wi-Fi they avoid the tiered data cap.

Wow, Smart Wi-Fi looks like it’s a win-win-win-win situation.

UMA expands to HDTV

Building on their 3G announcement from September, Orange has added a new HDTV service to their Unik lineup.

The service is designed to take advantage of the high-speed, low latency access available with Wi-Fi via Unik.

According to Roaul Roverato, executive vice president in charge of the new growth businesses division of Orange:

“Our proximity to the customer and our understanding of their expectations means we are able to react more quickly to their changing needs. For example in France, 40% of mobile TV usage is enjoyed at home* and this trend is growing, with over 58% of customers accessing video on demand (VoD) services and 32% watching live TV when at home** . By providing better handsets with bigger screens, seamless network access and exciting, high-quality content, Orange is shaping the future of mobile TV.”

I think it’s amazing they find 40% of mobile TV usage is at home, where people already have Wi-Fi coverage. Highlighting once again that Wi-Fi is a perfect offload opportunity.

Nokia Drops VoIP Support from new N Series?

As reported at GigaOm this weekend, apparently Nokia has dropped support for its VoIP applications on some new N series products going forward.

What appears to have happened is that some, but not all, of Nokia’s embedded SIP/VoIP stack has been removed. Some view this as an opportunity for more third party VoIP developers to jump in and innovate. Others view this as Nokia capitulating to the demands of mobile operators who see third-party VoIP apps cannibalizing high-margin international voice traffic.

Regardless, it re-opens the discussion about Nokia supporting a UMA client in the N and potentially E series devices. Nokia is the largest supplier of Wi-Fi-enabled devices today, and the lack of support for UMA in their N series products continues to be puzzling.

Capabilities such as ‘internet offload’, a dynamic routing capability in the handset which sends (for example) GSM voice traffic through the UMA tunnel but routes third party SIP/VoIP traffic directly to the internet, make it even easier for Nokia to support UMA and SIP/VoIP concurrently.

Internet Offload and UMA

“Internet Offload” is the ability for a dual-mode phone to connect directly to the internet through the Wi-Fi radio. The phone which comes to most people’s mind is the iPhone, but Wi-Fi enabled HTC and Nokia E/N series support this feature too.

When the iPhone enters a Wi-Fi environment, the GSM radio stays on (for circuit voice and mobile packet data services), and the Wi-Fi radio can be used for accessing internet services like Google Maps directly.

For some reason, the market seems to think that a dual-mode phone can support either UMA or Internet Offload, but not both simultaneously.

This is not true!

Internet Offload and UMA are fully compatible functions of a dual-mode phone.

In fact the strongest example is the family of UMA-enabled Blackberries (8820, Curve/8320, Pearl/8120) which all support UMA and Internet Offload concurrently.

Here’s how it works:

When a UMA-enabled Blackberry enters Wi-Fi, the UMA tunnel is established. The UMA tunnel is used to transport services which reside in the mobile core network to the phone. The easiest example is voice services. But any data application which is delivered from the mobile core is accessed through the UMA tunnel, applications like MMS or any stream media services offered from the network (MobiTV,…)

A key advantage of using the UMA tunnel for service delivery is mobility. Any application or service which takes advantage of the UMA tunnel maintains session continuity between the Wi-Fi network and the outdoor macro network.

But it’s the way UMA-enabled Blackberries also support Internet Offload which is most interesting. When the phone tries to access web based services like Google Maps, the traffic is routed directly to the Wi-Fi access layer and out to the internet. No going through the UMA tunnel, no burdening the mobile core with non-revenue generating internet traffic. Note this is also how the Blackberry accesses mail services when in Wi-Fi, directly over the internet.

The trick is that the Blackberry maintains a basic router function in the handset. For application which are ‘hosted’ (circuit voice, SMS, MMS,…), the traffic is routed through the UMA tunnel and to the mobile core. For browser based applications, the traffic is routed directly to the internet.

Note there is no 'seamless mobility' for services routed via Internet Offload directly over Wi-Fi. When the phone moves outside of Wi-Fi coverage, the session ends. The session can be restarted over the macro RAN, but there will be a drop in service.

Why is Internet Offload + UMA important?

First, it’s important to clear up the misunderstanding in the industry. Early UMA phones didn’t support the Internet Offload feature because operators specified they wanted UMA-enabled dual-mode phones to work ‘exactly the same’ in Wi-Fi as in GSM. Therefore, all the packet traffic was to be routed via the UMA tunnel to the mobile core when on Wi-Fi, because all packet traffic is routed to the mobile core when on GSM. [It’s in this way that UMA is really a RAN technology, making Wi-Fi an access radio for mobile services.]

With dual-mode phones supporting Internet Offload on the market, operators are again saying they want UMA-enabled phones to operate ‘exactly the same’. But now this means adding support for Internet Offload concurrently with UMA by routing some traffic over the UMA tunnel and other traffic directly to the internet.

Second, support of Internet Offload is a critical component of making the mobile phone an integral member of the ‘connected home.’ There is a movement underway to bring household electronics together into a cohesive fabric. But a mobile phone without Internet Offload capabilities* will be excluded from supporting local connections in the home. Thus the phone will continue to be outside the ‘connected home’ vision.

By highlighting UMA and Internet Offload support concurrently in the same device, UMA devices can now easily fit into the vision of the ‘connected home’.

Now Nokia N series handsets can support UMA along with the existing Internet Offload capabilities. In fact, the Nokia N95 was one of the first handsets to demonstrate support for DLNA, a ‘connected home’ protocol standard.

[* - There are two ways to make the handset a member of the 'connected home'. First is to have a dual-mode Wi-Fi enabled handset with Internet Offload capabilities. The second, pioneered by the Femto Forum, is to proxy a standard 3G handset into the connected home network via a femtocell.]