Electro/Telecom Industry Trends
June 2004
The Long Road for Wireless VoIP
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Until recently, wireless applications of Voice over IP (VoIP) were limited. This was due for the most part to the limitations of the radio frequency used to transmit data between the handset and the telecommunications backbone. Now, with the advent of third generation mobile system (3G) technology, this barrier has been removed.
“We’ve made tremendous changes, efficiencies, in the way we handle the air interface,” says Cheryl Blum, chair of the Telecommunications Industry Association’s (TIA) TR-45 Mobile & Personal Communications Systems Standards committee. “Now we can push a lot more information through. Before, we used to get 9.6 Kilobytes, 14 Kilobytes, maybe even 64. Today we have the technology that can achieve up to two Megabytes. The capabilities we're putting in place with 3G are facilitating VoIP.”
Despite these strides forward, current usage of wireless VoIP seems to remain minimal. One reason has to do with the infrastructure. Even though the concept is seemingly simple — packets of data traveling over the Internet — there is little consensus as of yet as to what the architecture of a wireless VoIP infrastructure should look like. Meanwhile, telecommunications providers are reluctant to simply rip out their existing infrastructure elements to make way for a relatively immature technology. Yet Cheryl believes that this is the time when it becomes vital to develop the standards that will drive adoption of VoIP. “It’s down the road, but we have to work on those standards now, so that they can be implemented, worked through, and deployed so VoIP will become more prevalent.”
In fact, there are a number of standards being developed that will address many of wireless VoIP’s outstanding issues. TIA and other industry organizations are now working on standards and recommendations that will address quality of service and latency concerns, help better define the wireless VoIP architecture, describe ways in which to support services through this new network, and address security concerns.
Another requirement being tackled is billing. “The bottom line is, we want to charge and bill for it, so how do we do that in this environment? There may be different structures for data or voice, new multimedia services being introduced, and varying business needs of service providers — all this needs to be taken into consideration,” says Cheryl.
While some companies have developed solutions to meet this need, their proprietary nature may limit their effectiveness. The solution? Develop a standardized way of handling VoIP billing. Doing so will help telecommunications providers take advantage of the efficiencies associated with standardized solutions. “That’s really the value of the standards, to be able to interoperate with multiple vendors’ equipment,” Cheryl says.
While wireless VoIP has its own unique issues, Cheryl believes that VoIP will eventually result in the convergence of wireless and wireline technologies. Because VoIP is packets of information being sent across the Internet, one of the differences between wireless and wireline is in how you access the Internet. “There might be multiple ways of access, but once you get to this big cloud called the Internet, everybody is pretty much the same,” Cheryl points out.
This convergence stands to benefit telecommunications providers with economies of scale currently not readily experienced in the industry. “From a service provider aspect, they can offer their wireless access and their wireline access over the Internet,” says Cheryl. Because both services would have much of the same infrastructure in common, maintenance, operations, billing, and other related services would become consolidated, resulting in potentially significant cost savings.