Some people have been
heralding the coming of hybrid devices that combine Wi-Fi VoIP with cellular
for many years, but so far, their impact has been minimal. A recent conference in Amsterdam heard from a group of telco execs who had experimented with dual-mode offerings, and the conclusions were: "
Operators have trouble finding customers for combined deals offering fixed and mobile services." Apparently, despite market offerings, consumers are disinterested in the services that offer few handset choices and are complicated to use. Meanwhile, according to Johnathan Collision, who is responsible for convergence for Czech O2 (good name), the corporate world has a better appreciation of dual-mode devices. All of this would have been news if we hadn't
predicted specifically these market realities in 2004 and
in less detail in 2003. The conclusion of my 2004 post was, "For the next few years, sign me up as skeptical." But now that those few years have passed, we need to revisit this topic. A lot of the old Wi-Fi problems are being mitigated: QoS is emerging, power consumption is improved, throughput and range are improved, costs have dropped, seamless hand-off technologies exist. Also, smartphones are growing in market share, and smartphone users want Wi-Fi for fast and cheap access to data services and VoIP. As the conference in Amsterdam concluded, today isn't the heyday of hybrid cellular/WLAN devices, but I think we may be close to a tipping point.
It's an uphill battle, but over the next few years, sign me up as optimistic.
Filed Under: wifi, wi-fi
