While it still hasn’t reached mass acceptance, VoIP communication is rapidly insinuating itself into every facet of our daily lives. Many long-distance and calling-card providers have used VoIP to reduce costs for years now, and consumers are getting more and more choices for VoIP services every day. VoIP companies are springing up like Spring flowers, offering everything from inexpensive long-distance calling to quality phone features such as caller ID and voicemail. It’s become quick, easy, and often free for a consumer to sign up to one of the thousands of available VoIP services like Skype, IdeaSIP, or Gizmo Project, and all the consumer needs is a broadband internet connection and the right hardware or software.
It seems only natural that the next big thing will be Wi-Fi VoIP. Wi-Fi phones and Wi-Fi-capable mobile phones are beginning to crop up on the market from leading manufacturers such as Apple, Nokia, and Linksys. Some, like the Linksys and UTStarCom Wi-Fi phones offer only Wi-Fi-based VoIP, while others such as the Nokia and Apple iPhone offer both traditional mobile phone service, but also have Wi-Fi connectivity to allow connections to most VoIP providers directly without incurring mobile connectivity charges.
With the increasing prevalence of Wi-Fi hotspots, and the soon to appear WiMax zones covering entire cities, connecting to a VoIP company and bypassing usual cell charges whenever possible makes perfect sense; however, this terrifies the mobile companies, who see their revenue streams dropping over the course of the coming years.
In fact, it’s terrified mobile phone companies so much, that the underhanded tricks are beginning to appear in abundance. Verizon has made the news lately by claiming patent ownership over the mere idea of using Wi-Fi VoIP phones to make phone calls, a fact that is likely to cause any number of providers that currently allow customers to connect via Wi-Fi VoIP phones to worry about repercussions. It seems the next logical step in VoIP, and that such a patents even exists is ludicrous, but it is still cause for real concern, as Vonage was recently found guilty of infringing upon this patent and ordered to pay $58 million USD in damages.
In the UK, Orange and Vodafone have gone so far as to require Nokia to remove VoIP capability from their N95 telephones in an effort to keep users from avoiding cell charges. This has caused somewhat of an uproar from customers, as Nokia clearly advertises the VoIP capability of its N95 handsets, and neither Orange nor Vodafone bother to mention to customers that such capability has been forcibly removed from their own versions of the N95 phones.
In the US, it’s almost impossible to find a mobile phone provider that has VoIP-capable phones available at all. Nokia’s VoIP-capable E61 PDA/phone, exceptionally popular in Europe, has an almost identical counterpart in the US (marketed by Cingular/AT&T) called the E62. It has all the same features, but no Wi-Fi capability at all, leaving the only Internet connectivity to be that which the cell provider allows through its own charged network.
Meanwhile, strictly Wi-Fi phones such as the Linksys WIP330 or the UTStarCom F3000, offer only limited performance, and have connectivity trouble when moving from Wi-Fi hotspot to Wi-Fi hotpot. Their inability to utilise a mobile cell network as a backup makes them of limited overall use for the moment except in offices or homes, where traditional VoIP-connected cordless phones might work just as well.
The technology is ready for Wi-Fi VoIP, and its popularity is guaranteed with price-conscious consumers, but there is still a considerably amount of pressure from mobile providers to keep the technology from reaching the populous.
While the news of Wi-Fi VoIP is bombarding the media, it still has significant hurdles to overcome before it is truly the next big thing.