The Time and Place for Mobile VoIP
A while ago, Tsahi Levent-Levi had a great post on the Radvision blog, questioning the viability of mobile VoIP applications. I tend to agree that people often get caught up in hyping and cheerleading the industry, without bothering to question the practicality or usefulness of a technology. When I hear about an industry trend or a hot new application, I like to ask myself “would my mother ever use this?” If the answer is “no”, I have a hard time believing it will become wildly successful.
I do believe there is a case to be made for mobile VoIP, but there are currently technical (usability) and market (carrier resistance) obstacles to mass consumer adoption. Until applications are either seamlessly integrated with a phone’s OS, or devices have native VoIP capabilities, both of which would most likely require carrier buy-in for support on next-gen mobile networks, mobile VoIP will continue to be a “neat” but not essential feature.
However, a focus on the consumer market ignores the promise of enterprise mobile VoIP and FMC. For instance, today Agito Networks announced the availability of the new version of its RoamAnywhere Router. The RoamAnywhere suite intelligently routes desktop calls to a user’s mobile device, and includes key UC features like IM, to enable enterprises to enjoy the all the benefits of their existing UC solutions. By delivering features that people actually want, like PBX integration, in environments that almost guarantee Wi-Fi access, enterprise mobile VoIP providers like Agito can overcome carrier resistance to deliver UC functionality. To be honest I have no idea how large the market is, but at least in the short term the enterprise may be the place to look for a mobile VoIP breakthrough.
Tags: Agito, FMC, mobile VoIP
April 6th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
John,
You make a valid point – if a VoIP application that needs to be installed by the user on the mobile is to be relevant, it will be done by an external device which the consumer already purchased. In the case of Agito that would be FMC. That said, T-Mobile @Home have such a service and I guess it’s preinstalled on some of their handsets.
Thinking about it a bit further, enterprises might still adopt mobile VoIP when they provide the handsets to the workforce, as there is someone taking care of all the installation, management and troubleshooting of the application.
Tsahi