Mobile VoIP

For those outside of the VoIP industry, 2008 will go down as the year the great recession began. For those inside the industry, 2008 was the year Mobile VoIP grew in prominence.

A year ago at this time, news of a mobile VoIP provider being acquired would have garnered a ton of headlines. Today, there was barely a footnote mentioning the sale of Jaxtr to Sabse Technologies, an 18 month old start-up backed by Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia.

Jaxtr, like many other companies at the time, fell victim to the economy and the lack of an active revenue generation model forcing it to trim its operations.  Many at the time proclaimed it to be the begin of the end.

I took an optimist’s view. It seems that today’s news lands in between the two.

What then does this say about the mobile VoIP industry?

There’s still interest, but not at the same price as once before. The industry is still alive, but it looks a lot different than a year ago.

Front runner Truphone is still going strong. fring continues to add features, functionality and users. Skype for the iPhone was a huge hit, even with limited functionality.

But for those mobile VoIP providers that continue to forge ahead, others have decided on a new path. Companies like Mobivox and Numbuzz have looked to partner with carriers, rather than compete directly.

Others are no longer in business.

The sale of Jaxtr is only the beginning of the M&A activity that will be seen over the next 12 to 18 months within the mobile VoIP industry. As for predicting who’s next, my guess is as good as yours - but expect more than one deal to go down by the end of this year.

Mobile VoIP service provider Truphone announced the availability of their Truphone application for the iPod Touch today. This announcement, which is the latest in a series of announcements out of the company, essentially turns your iPod Touch into a pretty robust WiFi VoIP phone or, to coin a new term, a VoIP Smartphone.

With the iPod Touch starting at around $229, when you bundle in the Truphone client, it is actually a vernerable choice if you are in the market for a WiFi VoIP phone since many of today’s WiFi VoIP phones are in the $200+ range making this a very interesting play/solution.

I don’t have an iPod Touch so i can’t comment about the application first hand, but I do use Truphone’s service on my iPhone (see my review here) and I have to say that the service has been great. So, if you are an iPod Touch user, or are looking for a WiFi VoIP phone, take a hard look at this.

Fancy that. Another brilliant ploy for your dollars by the wireless telcos.

Lock-in customers by contract for a few years by subsidizing laptops in order to avoid churn.

[click to continue…]

From Ward Mundy on my iPhone VoIP is a Dud post,

I’m a big fan of Apple computers. In fact, I have lots of them including an iPhone. But I’ve never been a fan of Apple, Inc. and its business practices. For all the bashing that Microsoft takes, consider for a moment where we’d all be if Apple had been in the driver’s seat with the industry standard business operating system. It would have been everyone’s worst nightmare. And the iPhone pretty much proves it.

Could not agree more here.

The epic fail that has been municipal WiFi is no big secret.

Every week you can read about a project’s trials and tribulations (and them going into the toilet). Take a look at the recent shut-down of Wireless Oakland due to a lack of funds. Obviously, if they ran out of money, there wasn’t enough coming in the door, due to a lack of consumer interest necessary to make it a self-sustaining offering.

What interesting, is no one, not those trying to provide the service to those writing about the promise it holds has said the real reason why Muni-WiFi will never work:

“The Public Isn’t Interested in Muni-WiFi”

I hate to say it, but 90 - 95% of the population are not like people like me (and you). They aren’t always on. They aren’t internet feins. They don’t Facebook, Tweet or check email every thirty seconds. They want to check their personal email, browse porn, pay some bills or browse something.

They prefer “disconnected”. They want to get away from work. They think the computer is still something for geeks.

Muni-WiFi is by geeks, for geeks.

The problem is, there just aren’t enough of us out there.

[This is a guest post by Tsahi Levent-Levi. Tsahi is a Product Manager at RADVISION and writer at VoIP Survivor. Tsahi was formerly the IMTC 3G-324M Activity Group co-chairman up until recently, when he moved to chair the IMTC IMS Activity Group.]

Several years ago, when we took the decision at RADVISION to develop our 3G-324M stack, we assumed a five year window of opportunity, after which a VoIP-based technology (SIP/IMS) will replace it. Now, more than five years later, the end of 3G-324M is nowhere to be seen. The reasons for this stem from the differences between 3G-324M and SIP – between circuit switching and packet-based communication technologies.

3G-324M

3G-324M is a circuit switched-based protocol. It runs on a bidirectional 64kbps circuit switched connection, and on top of it, 3G-324M multiplexes different logical channels – audio, video and control.

The main aspects associated to 3G-324M as a protocol are:

• The bandwidth available is always the same – 64kbps.
• The latency will usually be around 800 milliseconds for a roundtrip, though it may fluctuate or change depending on the operator, the cell, time of day and the color of the sky.
• The protocol is a p2p protocol. You have two sides communicating with each other. There are no proxies or registrars along the way. No third parties.
• It is deployed… almost every 3G handset out there has it embedded into it.

SIP

SIP is an IP-based protocol. It is also used in IMS. It sends packets over a network that doesn’t guarantee quality of service or any bandwidth (you can argue that it does, but that is done using higher level protocols). SIP can be used for a myriad of communication purposes, one of which can be video telephony.

The main aspects associated to SIP when taken for mobile video telephony are:

• The bandwidth available may vary during the call and cannot be guaranteed, unless all-IP and full policy function (PCRF) will be in place.
• Latency is a real issue due to the use of an IP-based network. A round trip of less than 2 seconds will be viewed as an achievement.
• The protocol is distributed with different network entities – user agents, proxies, registrars, etc.
• Few commercial deployments by operators exist, and even these are not large ones. There are trials and there are “underground” solutions you can install independently on your handset, piggybacking the operator’s network.

SIP has its advantages and they are many – support for different resolutions, bandwidths and frame rates, support for non video telephony services like instant messaging, presence, voice only calls, mobility, nomadity and much more. This is also what causes the delay – more features = complexity.

3G-324M is a lot easier for an operator to digest in today’s networks. It can do simple billing, it can use existing UMTS networks, and it works – no need for upgrades, it can use existing handsets. SIP, however, is not that easy for an operator. It’s much more open, which leads to issues of billing, management and owning the network and its data. It doesn’t exist in handsets in a way that is easy to deploy and it is definitely not as interoperable as 3G-324M.

SIP has two ways to become important in mobile handsets:

1. Operators will take the decision to plunge head-on into the world of IMS, where SIP is used in the mobile handsets.
2. Internet companies will find a way to have enough handsets and utilize the mobile operators’ data networks to deploy a video telephony service.

I must admit I believe the first option is a lot more realistic, but it will take time. At least 2-3 more years if not more.