Do Users want WiFi VoIP?

It certainly appears not, given BT's decision to quietly discard their Fusion GSM/WiFi phone.

While take up with businesses has been moderately successful, some 100,000 units sold, the far more important consumer market, the kids standing in and around MacDonalds all evening, where the mobile companies make their money, have singularly not bothered.

Perhaps it is because the Fusion handset is just not sexy enough to compete with Motorola and Nokia?
Certainly they can't be worried by the cost- My son spent nearly £60 on his last month.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/ ... 664,00.htm

Reply from ianplain on Feb 07, 2008 - 11:44 AM

Hi.

I have a feeling of Deja-vu here. Anyone remember onephone?
Great business product but flopped in the consumer market.

I think the problem is quality and adding the cost of the wifi access be that payg or contract. obviously macdonalds wifi is free, but is web auth only so hard to use with a wifi phone.

Ian

Reply from satphoneguy on Feb 07, 2008 - 02:37 PM

wifi VOIP is a great idea. but i do not want to buy it from a company like BT. for me VOIP is as much about cutting out the major telecos. as anything else. ideally a WiFi VOIP phone would run an IM platform complete with presence and voice calling. any PSTN interconnection would be add on. oh. and of course absolutely no subscription charges.

i do not want to pay a major carriers for phone service and than at the same time pay for bandwidth for WiFi. the carriers need to have regular networks that are good enough that would never come up.

wifi VOIP should be an evolution of the ATA; not an addition to cellular service.

Reply from ianplain on Feb 07, 2008 - 03:40 PM

Quote:

ideally a WiFi VOIP phone would run an IM platform complete with presence and voice calling. any PSTN interconnection would be add on. oh. and of course absolutely no subscription charges.

And when the VC money runs out ?

Reply from satphoneguy on Feb 07, 2008 - 05:35 PM

i was making a 'consumer oriented' comment.' consumer's do not care about VC recovery. but the business should be in the selling of the hardware/software not recurring fees. would you want to pay per message/mail fees for email or IM. voice should be no different. of course you also will have to pay for the WiFi. either in your home, through subscription or through buy cups of coffee or big macs that give you complimentary access.

VOIP itself should be heading to a peer2peer model. with no more than a name server in the middle to direct the call. network intelligence belong in side the WiFi handsets. of course PSTN termination can sit on top of that; but you should have perfect peer2peer functionality without a subscription.

in fact if the sony mylo were marketed as a subscription free WiFi only phone instead instead a a gadget for teenagers we may be making more progress. this is one device that does fit my vision of near 'ideal.' i only wish that the gtalk was VOIP enabled instead of only skype; or better yet that it had a SIP stack.

Reply from rgower on Feb 07, 2008 - 06:57 PM

I honestly don't think the main consumer market for this sort of thing give a brass farthing about charges, costs or quality.
If they did there would be a real outcry about mobile handsets that collapse after 12 months of use, or the stupid rates mobile carriers charge.

It is a 'Mine is better than yours' culture, which explains why Apple are getting away with so much with their IPhone. As a mobile phone it is at best average and as an Internet device it is shoddy. But it is ever so sexy.

Reply from ianplain on Feb 07, 2008 - 08:23 PM

Quote:

consumer's do not care about VC recovery

When it folds they will.

Quote:

VOIP itself should be heading to a peer2peer model. with no more than a name server in the middle to direct the call. network intelligence belong in side the WiFi handsets. of course PSTN termination can sit on top of that; but you should have perfect peer2peer functionality without a subscription.

Basically you have described the Skype model.

and that's fine but its not fine when you put that model into a business environment or in the case of Mobile / wifi where there are High overheads on renting antenna space and backhauling.

Remember GSM mobile was designed to operate up to speeds of 90mph and hand over reliably, With wifi in a town you would be lucky to get it to hand over at all.

I can see Mobile IM taking over from SMS, But when you see the profits from SMS you see why carriers aren't keen. The carrier that stands out at the moment is 3 in this respect as they give free IM and free Skype.

Ian

Reply from dean on Feb 07, 2008 - 08:40 PM

Quote:

I honestly don't think the main consumer market for this sort of thing give a brass farthing about charges, costs or quality.

I wonder if that's too many things lumped into one bracket and whether most of the consumer market would care about at least one of those 3 elements? Speaking for myself quality does matter. I don't mind paying an extra 0.5p/min for that quality. So I'm less price conscious (to a limit obviously) and more quality conscious. But I do know that there are people out there for who cost is everything and quality is nothing.

Quote:

consumer's do not care about VC recovery

I think the best way to express that is to say that consumers don't consider VC recovery.

Quote:

the business should be in the selling of the hardware/software not recurring fees.

Or service(s). There are unique selling points out there, that people will pay money for. You can't wrap the entire space into one category. There are hundreds of small niche markets as a result of telephony being so ubiquitous. Just because they're small niche markets does not make them a bad business necessarily.

Quote:

perfect peer2peer functionality without a subscription.

How does the entity that runs the name server to operate that turn into a business?

Actually that's an unfair question, because it's the billion dollar question, and if you knew the answer you'd probably just go and start a billion dollar company...

Reply from satphoneguy on Feb 07, 2008 - 08:41 PM

overhead, antenna space and backhauling should be paid for from flat monthly fees for data only subscriptions. of course if the phone is purely wifi for use at home and in hotspots i should only be paying for the hardware as the i am already paying for wifi access through DSL/Cable and the cups of coffee i buy at starbucks.

where i would certainly like to see more wifi voip is to replace the current @ home voip platforms. i use an ATA and i also have a cordless sip phone with a router built in. these phones should and i believe will become wifi. why should i have an extra piece of wired equipment connected to my router when the phone could be wifi instead of dect and work in any hotspot. of course there are wifi SIP phones today but they are quite expensive compared to unlocking a vonage unit costing less than $30.

my main frustration with how the major telecos are handling wifi/gsm hybrid phone is that they should be providing quality bandwidth over their 3g/3.5g networks that if anything I am turning my phone itself into the hotspot for my laptop.

to be clear. i have no problem at all with paying fees to the cellular companies for a wireless pipe to the internet. what i do not want is to have peer2peer 'free VOIP' monetized on a per minute basis.

I have mentioned before that the entire term VOIP is becoming too fuzzy. personally i am an enthusiast of 'toll bypass' services that allow me to call for free or substantially less. when the carriers start talking about transitioning their current platforms to VOIP technology they are speaking of something totally different that has to do with cutting there own expenses. the fact is voice can and should be treated as any other data on the internet.

At the end of the day vodaphone, t=mobile, AT&T, etc. will still own the networks; and we will still pay them for access. this does not mean we are not due for a dramatic change in how and what we are paying for. it should look a lot like how we buy internet in the home and will eventually replace DSL/Cable for many consumers.

Reply from hfrisch on Feb 09, 2008 - 03:55 PM

I think that a big part of the BT trouble was the market offer that they came up with - the phone worked on WIFi "at home" and not out and about.

I use a dual mode phone all the time and find it VERY useful - I put in a local SIM when I travel and have a US VoIP account in it (have tried Stanaphone, Voicestick, and sipgate.uk). I use it in combination with a single number service that forwards to both the SIP account and the GSM account (I log in and put in the pre-paid SIM numbers when out of country).

This accomplished a few things - I am always reachable at the same number AND I can get and make calls home with no concern at all about the cost ($0.01 or $0.02/minute is close enough to free for me to not worry about it). Compared to roaming charges of more than $1/minute, this paid for the phone in the first few trips, but, more importantly, it let me call home for personal calling that I would have either skipped or cut short.

I believe that a lot is made about hand over and other "cool" features of these devices that are interesting but not critical.

In the cast of the big GSM bill, one option for kids with a dual mode phone would be to give them a limited budget - $25/month of pre-paid GSM calling and some amount added on VoIP. In that environment, you could almost bet that they would find WiFi VoIP - not to save money (the bill is paid), but to talk more. Of course, the phone would need to meet some minimum appearance criteria, or it would stay in pocket and not come out in public.

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