>> 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).
>That's fine, but in either case, you have operators, right? This isn't
>the scenario you imply when you say [direct quote]:
>> "But operating a bunch of loosely connected WLANs is always
>> going to be a lot cheaper than operating cellular infrastructure, so
>> there will be a limit how far mobile operators can lower their tariffs to
>> stay competitive."
>Which I took to mean: "WLANs with no particular central organization
>can take over the urban mobile arenas."
Make that into "WLANs with no particular central organisation can be
used as an alternative last mile infrastructure by low cost telephony
service providers and thereby have an impact on the
telecommunications landscape, including tariffs" and will I agree
with the interpretation.
There are two levels to this - one is the last mile infrastructure -
the other are the services delivered over it.
The WLANs (representing a transport medium) can be loosely connected,
meaning they are owned and run by different companies in different
places for different reasons, most likely telephony is not a driver
for them.
The services that are delivered over those WLANs are a different
matter, they need not be under the control of the WLAN operators and
can still be viable.
>cf. mobile phones, you're mostly talking about a "quasi-mobile" (seated)
>user base.
That is what I would think of as the most likely scenario, yes.
The point however is that there is a strong likelihood that the
mobile service landscape as a whole will develop into a scalable
spectrum of services. One one end of that scale you would have
services with less or no mobility and higher bandwidth and/or lower
cost, such as for example VoIP via FTTH, CATV/ADSL or WiFi etc. On
the other end of that scale you have services with the highest
mobility and availability with lower bandwidth and higher cost, such
as for example Satellite mobile and 3G cellular.
Which service you choose will then depend on the situation. It is
even imaginable that the infrastructure will ultimately do the
scaling for you transparently. It is also imaginable that SDR will
bring about compact and cost effective devices that can use a large
range if not all of the services on that scale.
Sure, this isn't going to happen overnight - it will take some time.
However, on the way there, companies will try to exploit emerging
transports such as WLAN and also others. I agree that those who use
existing business and marketing models have a good chance to fail,
but others who adapt or invent new models are likely to be more
successful. Some will come up with viable formulas and their models
are destined to get a place on that above mentioned scale.
I also agree, that when the new players have succeeded in coming up
with a viable model, the incumbents will rush in and claim their
chunk of the new market segment.
My argument is therefore not to say some coffee shop startups are to
take over the communications industry. My point is that promising
technologies will be exploited and viable models that may come out of
it stand a good chance to eventually make their way into the
mainstream infrastructure, even if they looked ridiculous within a
mainstream context when they started out in the first place.
There are a number of good reasons why VoIP over WLAN is a serious contender:
- WLANs are being rolled out, public and private.
- There is a large number of people with PDAs.
- WiFi interfaces for PDAs are likely to become a mainstream item.
All this without any telephony in mind !
However, I could imagine that some vendor of WLAN base stations, will
eventually come up with a combo-base station that is both a WLAN base
station and a cordless telephony base station in one box with the
ability to switch between VoIP and POTS. Combine this with a
telephony application for PDAs that uses the capabilities of such a
combo base station and you might have a hot selling product that
makes its way into many home and office environments.
Users of this combo box might still use their cordless phones for
telephony and their PDAs and notebooks for LAN. But more and more PDA
users might find it compelling enough to download the telephony
application onto their PDA and use the PDA for telephony. Initially
they would make phone calls from their PDA using VoIP to the combo
box and POTS from the combo box into the public telephone network.
This would set the background of opportunity for companies to provide
VoIP gateway services to PDA users, which could ignite the
development of a new market segment. Initially, those PDA users would
make telephone calls via VoIP from their PDA via the combo box to the
VoIP gateway service provider and from there into the public
telephone network. Initially this would all be within the limits of
one's home or office WLAN. Important to note, with a combo box there
would always be the ability to fall back to POTS.
Eventually those users who make calls from home and from their office
via their PDAs via WLAN using VoIP gateway providers would start
using the same service within public WLANs. Eventually, this could
create enough momentum for phone makers to build devices that look
more like mobile phones but use VoIP over WLAN, perhaps a combo user
device that is both a cordless phone and a VoIP/WLAN phone.
People always say that cellular phones and PDAs will merge into one
device that uses cellular infrastructure for connectivity and this is
widely accepted as a likely scenario. While I believe that to be a
valid scenario, I also see the possibility of a similar scenario
where PDAs and cordless phones merge into one device that uses
cordless infrastructure for connectivity.
In fact I could imagine a modular device that can be a PDA/cellular
combo or a PDA/cordless combo depending on what RF module is
inserted. Unified messaging service providers are likely to step in
to provide follow-me services to deliver incoming calls transparently.
I am not saying that this is how it is going to happen nor that any
of this will happen at all. However, this is one likely scenario that
illustrates how public WLAN telephony could emerge without anybody
actually intending to build a public WLAN telephony network.
Experience tells us that technology booms often emerge this way:
unintentionally. Various conditions fall into place and something new
that few people predicted comes out of it. BTW, i-mode is one such
example.
I agree, it would be difficult to plan and successfully execute a
telephony revolution based on VoIP over WLAN, at least if it is not a
complementary service but the only intended revenue earner.
However, I believe that the conditions are almost there for VoIP over
WLAN to emerge "by accident" as a viable addition to the
communications landscape that will impact existing services and
business models.
That is what I meant by "loosely connected".
kind regards
benjamin
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Received on Mon Aug 13 13:41:41 2001