>so much for Benjamin Kowarsch's "oh, just let
>a buncha WLANs gel and we can kiss the
> mobile/wireless operators goodbye."
Very funny you quote me saying something I never said - neither
directly as quoted, nor indirectly as I suspect you may later claim
to have meant.
The whole point is that WLAN telephony has a good chance of becoming
a successful *coexisting* low cost alternative, not despite but
*because* of it's "flaws".
Try to liberate yourself from a few assumptions we are all too
willing to take for granted ...
Assumption #1: Any alternative wireless phone system will have to
wipe out any other system or it can only be a total failure -
coexistence of cheap with cheerful is impossible.
The examples of PHS in China shows that there can be coexistence
between two different mobile telephony services. An very cheap system
with limited mobility (PHS cannot be used out of town in China)
coexists with a more expensive system with high mobility (cellular).
There is no reason why a VoIP over WLAN could not coexist with
cellular as a low cost mobile option and thereby have an impact on
cellular tariffs. The mobility trade-off is made up for by the lower
cost. Depending on situation and user there would be uses for either
service.
Assumption #2: Mobile telephony *must* have automatic hand-over
between cells while a call is in progress or nobody will want to use
it.
If you are sitting in a coffee shop and you have just ordered some
coffee and cake, you know you will be there for a while - if at the
same time, you can make a phone call there for a fraction of the cost
of a call from your cell phone, then the chance is that you will make
that cheap call although you know that it is going to cut off if you
walk out there.
If the calls are cheap enough, people are easily coerced into giving
up a bit of mobility. That's what happened with PHS in the early
years. People knew that the chance of a dropped call was high if they
were moving around while a call was in progress. Many people
therefore gave up using PHS in favour of cellular, but many others
did accept that flaw in return for cheaper calls.
Who says that a viable service needs to be hi tech ? As long as it
has a significant cost advantage most people do not mind flaws. Less
than twenty years after the introduction of cheap but unstable and
unreliable desktop computers [compared to what was standard then],
Compaq, the No.1 in this field bought both DEC and Tandem, the No.1s
in their respective field of high availability computers. Today, most
people don't mind if computers crash - "Just reboot and hit the save
button more often" is the accepted paradigm. "It's cheaper that way -
that's all that matters", even IT professionals say.
Likewise, if WLAN VoIP telephony can offer a significant cost
advantage not all but most people can be coerced into accepting "Just
hit redial and don't move around to much" as the going paradigm.
Assumption #3: Any mobile telephony service *must* have full
geographic coverage.
Once upon a time people were used to having to find a public phone
box in order to be able to make a call while out of the house/office.
And still today there is quite a number of people out there who use
pagers or no mobile communications tools at all and for whatever
reason rely on public phones.
If there are a sufficient number of WLANs available in coffee shops,
bars, hotel lounges, office buildings then a WiFi device, used for
email and organizer tasks combined with a VoIP telephony application
can be seen as a kind of portable public phone. Again, if it is
significantly cheaper to make a phone call from that WiFi-PDA phone,
not everybody, but many people would choose WLAN VoIP and not use the
more expensive cell phone, even if it means the extra inconvenience
of first having to check whether there is coverage.
The important thing is to have base stations in places where people
spend a little while anyway and are not just passing through.
Assumption #4: Any mobile telephony service can only be offered if
the entire network is owned by one entity and administered as one
entity.
On the Internet many companies offer services even though they do not
control the last mile and their customers may use various different
suppliers and methods to access these services each time they log on.
Likewise, a VoIP service company could offer services, without owning
any WLAN base station themselves. One day, a customer may use their
services from within an airport lounge where the WLAN is operated by
the airline and comes as a free service to frequent flyers. Another
day, that same customer may use the very same services from a hotel
lounge where the WLAN is operated by the hotel and access charges are
put on the hotel bill. Yet another day, that customer may use the
services from a coffee shop where the coffee shop operates the WLAN
and time limited access comes as a throw in with each consumption,
i.e one cappuccino gives you 15 minutes WLAN access time.
Assumption #5: WLANs can only be used for telephony if their sole
purpose is telephony.
In the aforementioned examples each WLAN operator has a different
motive to roll-out and operate a WLAN. The airline wants to improve
their frequent flyer program, the hotel wants to improve their hotel
service and the coffee shop wants to encourage people to visit and
consume more coffee. None of them needs to have a viable telephony
business case to roll out and operate their WLAN - in fact they need
not and will not have any intention for any telephony service at all.
Yet customers could use those WLANs to access VoIP services and the
WLAN operators could become agents of the VoIP service company, like
today news agents sell phone cards.
Assumption #6: VoIP cannot work because of technical limitations ...
a) bandwidth on the Internet
Who says that phone calls have to go all the way over the public
Internet ? As long as the pipe from WLAN operators to the VoIP
service's switching centre is big enough it doesn't matter. From the
switching centre calls could be routed and delivered conventionally.
My buddy called me from London the other day and told me that he's
got a calling card where he can call me here in Tokyo from London for
about 4p (ca.6 yen) per minute. The quality of our 1 hour 20 mins
call was excellent at all times. That calling card service may or may
not use VoIP between switching centres, but the fact is that they use
the incumbent telcos for the last mile on both ends. A VoIP service
operator could offer the same kind of pricing using WLAN as a last
mile either at the originating or the terminating end or both.
Please, anyone on this list, don't try to tell me if you could call
your buddies or parents back home for 6 yen per minute from your PDA
or notebook while having a cup of coffee at Doutor's you wouldn't
feel like going there more often and use that service.
b) IP address unknown by callers
Who says that callers need to know the IP address of the phone they
are calling ? Who says they even need to know that the called party
is on VoIP ? As long as the VoIP service company makes this
transparent to users it doesn't matter. There are various
technologies around to accomplish this.
c) called party not always online
Who says that a called party has to be reachable all the time ? Like
with cellular mobile telephony calls can be diverted to a voice mail
box and messages can be retrieved either conventionally or delivered
as email. Furthermore, calls could also be delivered to a
conventional phone when a called party is offline.
d) WLAN power consumption
Who says that demand could not drive development of better power
management ? When cellular phones started out, they were bulky
battery draining bricks. Less than ten years later they are tiny and
quite power efficient.
For anybody who believes that VoIP is not viable as a technology,
just check out how many long distance services transparently use VoIP
already for transit. Also, Cisco and Ericsson have a system intended
for shopping malls which is based on VoIP with a GSM air interface.
At present there is an IP/SS7 gateway somewhere down the line, but I
happen to have met the Cisco product manager in San Jose and they see
SS7 as an interim and firmly believe that eventually there will be
all VoIP networks. So don't laugh just yet at VoIP, it's a serious
contender.
With WLAN, all I can see is ..
- for anybody thinking out of the box there are quite a number of
interesting possibilities
- infrastructure is going to be rolled out anyway without any VoIP
aspirations by the builders
therefore it seems pretty obvious that there will be various
companies using various business models to try and exploit this
emerging infrastructure and not all but some of those are likely to
come up with something viable and succeed.
Most interesting I find, however, the double standards with which
technologies are appraised.
On one side I am being urged to believe that *no matter what pricing
model*, people are going to watch TV on their mobiles simply because
of mobility - "it is there all the time" - and despite a trade-off in
quality.
On the other side, that same gospel also tries to convince me that
public telephony would not be used over WLAN other than by a very few
hi tech freaks even if it was to be *significantly cheaper* simply
because of a trade-off in mobility.
In other words, people will always choose increased mobility even in
situations where mobility is not required and where this means
significantly higher and unnecessary cost.
I am sorry, but this defies both logic and experience.
So, if neither logic nor experience is behind the reasoning, I'm
afraid to say the only thing left as a motive is 3G Bias ...
- If it's 3G it's good and will take off beyond anybody's imagination
no matter what.
- If it's not 3G it's ridiculous and can't possibly work no matter what.
Of course everybody who believes in the gospel will vehemently deny
this and rush to argue otherwise. However, no matter what they may
say, there is this bias aftertaste.
Don't take my word for it - Try an experiment. Whenever there is an
argument, just for fun, play the devil's advocat and try to determine
to what extend the 3G related technology is found acceptable on the
merits of being 3G while the non 3G technology is ridiculed on the
grounds of not being 3G. I would be very surprised if a person
capable of thinking out of the box would not find a significant level
of bias in favour of 3G, being the latest gospel.
kind regards
benjamin
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Received on Sun Aug 12 23:12:49 2001