“Wi-Fi Calling is Awesome”

That’s what Sascha Segan, lead analyst for PCMag Mobile, concluded after his business trip to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress 2011 and subsequent family vacation around Spain.

Segan writes:

“Wi-Fi calling is awesome. Making phone calls while roaming usually costs $1 or more per minute. Skype is one way around this. T-Mobile's Wi-Fi calling feature can be even better, as it lets you make and receive calls using your U.S. phone number and standard T-Mobile service plan.”

Need I say more?

But I will. Our team who attended MWC 2011 also had lower numbers for our expense reports because we were able to stay in contact with our families and colleagues cheaply with Wi-Fi Calling. For international travel, it’s a no brainer.

VoLGA = Operator’s response to Mobile VoIP

The ‘skype-hype’ is reaching a new level, and for good reason. By some accounts, Skype (through Skype Out or point to point) now accounts for 30% of the massive international calling market today.

And now VoIP is going mobile. Gartner just released a report suggesting that in the next 10 years, more than half of mobile voice traffic will be VoIP based, with much of that enabled through the introduction of LTE. It seems to me that launching an LTE service without voice is inviting mobile VoIP into your network.

This is why the voice over LTE ‘problem’ is so critical for mobile operators, and why more and more operators are investigating VoLGA.

VoLGA lets mobile operators leverage the voice infrastructure already in place to compete directly with Mobile VoIP. With VoLGA, mobile operators can weave their voice service into the myriad of Web 2.0 applications, leveraging the unbridled innovation of the Internet while embedding their core revenue generating service.

In addition, VoLGA lets mobile operators take their voice service beyond handsets, turning it into a VoIP object which can be downloaded to laptops, ultra-mobile PCs, mobile internet devices, or embedded into LTE home gateways.

From the beginning, the power of the UMA/GAN specification has been to extend the mobile operator’s core service to the internet. Now more than ever, mobile operators are turning to UMA/GAN to solve this problem.

Is UMA Today Prophetic?

Stephen Lawson of IDG News Service wrote an article recently that was picked up by Network World and a few other publications. The article, IPhone Skype May Be Tip of the Iceberg for Carriers, delves into the challenges mobile operators are currently facing by the proliferation of over-the-top mobile VoIP services. For example, Skype, now available on the iPhone, has been downloaded more than 2 million times.

Flash back to the first UMA Today newspaper (now magazine) we published in January 2006. Look at this cartoon we drew up to illustrate the major hazard VoIP poses for mobile operators. So have we come full circle, have we not advanced at all, or is UMA Today simply a prophet?
All good questions, but the answer is not quite so mysterious. VoIP service providers have been and continue to be a key source of competition for operators. Some, like 3 UK, have chosen to give up their voice service to Skype, while others are using UMA to combat mobile VoIP.

UMA was originally envisioned as the operator’s response to Skype. Provide a VoIP service integrated with the mobile service, provide features that other VoIP services don’t have, and give consumers the best mobile experience for a great price over the Internet. It’s a story that doesn’t get old.

Skype on N97: No Thanks.

When I first saw the announcement that Nokia was going to bundle Skype into the N97, I was a bit surprised.

If you recall, it was barely 6 months ago Nokia said they were pulling the VoIP hooks out of the S60 OS.

And now they are going to actually put a full Skype client bundled into the device? Wow.

I think mobile operators have barely tolerated the fact that users may be able to download a VoIP client onto an open platform phone. But when a major vendor comes out and says they are going to wrap a competing voice service...I think the FierceVoIP headline says it best: “Skype on Nokia N97 invokes wrath of carriers.”

What is going on in Finland? These seem like the moves of a desperate company that can’t decide on a strategy. Typically, Nokia charts a course and executes it. But when it comes to VoIP, it seems like they can’t decide in what direction to go.

I know I’m a bit biased, but this seems easy to me:

Nokia, your bread gets its butter from mobile service providers. In turn, the primary revenue for mobile service providers is voice and SMS. Bundling a service onto your product that directly competes with your customers' primary revenue generating service (or even providing the hooks for it) seems like a bad idea.

If only there was a VoIP service that was designed BY mobile operators FOR mobile operators. Hummm… what was the name of it again???? It’s starts with a U…

Rather than fighting against the wishes of the mobile operators, why don’t you give them what they want? Put UMA on all those cool N and E phones that already have Wi-Fi.

SIDE NOTE:

In a discussion I had at MWC on this very topic, an analyst told me they thought Nokia’s long-term secret plan is to use its service portal Ovi as a VoIP hub, basically competing directly with its customers.