To make money from mobile VoIP, companies have to accept certain realities
Source: goebel.net
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Jon Arnold has updated his very interesting portal website IP Convergence TV. This time I also wrote a guest opinion, because to make money from mobile VoIP companies have to accept certain realities: "WiFi isn’t everywhere and callback costs double".
I love the mobile use of VoIP but I still find it quite uncomfortable. That’s what I point out. Especially annoying is how Skype, Fring, Truphone and other SIP based VoIP services get blocked by German 3G providers. Sorry, Dean Bubley from Disruptive Analysys! The reality looks much darker for VoIPo3G than you predict for the future. (But thanks for your regular Google ads "3G mobile Voice over IP. Analyst report: is it a threat to carriers? Or a future opportunity?". I better put a direct link to your website.)
Mobile VoIP over Wifi works only at home or in the office where I don’t need it. So in my guest opinion I advocate intelligent cell phone software which automatically completes calls as callback, callthrough, Vo3G or VoWifi while the user doesn’t even notice. I have already installed an example software on a Nokia E61.
Maybe if more and more people use these options, Dean’s dream will come true. If everyone uses only mobile callthrough, triggered by intelligent software on the handset, the mobile network operators cannot charge any other items than the tariff’s included minutes for local calls. Their voice legacy cell phone networks would become dumb pipes into the internet, the way we already see it with the 3Skypephone or iSkoot, Ringfree, Mobivox, Jajah Direct, Sipbroker, Tpad, Rebtel, Mobiletalk, etc. If mobile operators wanted to charge for international calls at all, they would have to embrace VoIPo3G and could at least charge for data, the way Dean predicts it.
But until this comes true, the mobile VoIP companies should attack the incumbents with better callthrough options, to take more and more cell phone calls out of the traditional networks and into IP. Read the full text for further explanations!
