Mobile Business VoIP - Moving Target?
Posted by Benjamin Ellis on Tuesday, August 26th 2008
Loading ...There is a fair amount of chatter in the Blogosphere about an apparent shift in Nokia’s VoIP strategy - take this one from GIGAOM: “No VoIP In New Nokia N-Series Phones? Is Nokia Turning Its Back on MobileVoIP?”
Nokia has been pushing the envelope on the Fixed-Mobile Convergence front for quite a whole. For those who’ve missed out on the wild excitement of FMC and UMA, it is a vision that would see fixed and mobile voice coming together. Something that would actually be an exciting development for office telephony. The architectures usually employ Wi-Fi to bridge the final gap between the fixed office LAN and the mobile handset - which also opens up the potential for using public Wi-Fi hotspots (QoS permitting).
Image seemlessly switching between a GSM Mobile call and the same call via Wi-Fi onto the office LAN. Of course there is a fly in the ointment: It is a touchy subject for both mobile operators and business users. Calls over the LAN to another user on the network are free, obviously. Calls over the GSM network aren’t. As is often the case, one person’s cost saving is another’s revenue loss. In this case, the mobile carrier, and that is one of the potential big issues with FMC. And the man in the middle? Well, unsurprisingly it is the handset vendors. Back to Nokia.
Handsets like Nokia’s N95 enable VoIP as well as GSM calls. It’s not as seemless as it could be yet, but there are some very interesting apps out there. Take Fring as an example, it also includes instant messaging capabilities and Skype. Before you it out of the window as too consumer, think about the cost savings of IM and VoIP against your business mobile bills.
However, it seems that new Nokia handsets, like the N78, are missing this functionality. Garrett Smith, VoIP insider picks up the story:
This is a sticky situation for Nokia (and other handset manufacturers) since both the carriers and the carriers customers are Nokia’s customers; each of whom want something different. Nokia obviously played it safe with this move, siding with the carrier…
Garrett posted a further update today, after Nokia’s PR company touched base with him. The whole situation is complicated further by the desktop telephony vendors, who will want a slide of the action too. Cisco has Wi-Fi handsets and others are making a play for the convergence space too. Somehow all of this has to glue together, and suddenly you are bumping into the world of unified communications. It’s a big piece of pie to swallow.
You can obviously still install 3rd party apps to give VoIP on the handset, providing the network operator doesn’t block VoIP, but that it far from an integrated solution. Ultimately, as a business user, minimum overall cost and complexity are key.
In Europe, especially in the scandinavian countries, mobile voice has existed in the office in the form of DECT phones for quite some time. Reduced wiring costs and increased mobility for users are just some of the benefits. The magic will happen when it all gets down to one handset. One that will work outside of the office as well as inside, giving the full deskphone experience.
That’s still a way off, and by the look of Nokia’s new handsets, it is potentially getting further away…
AI
