Jogja Ponsel

As VoIP phones grace the desks of more and more workers across the globe, analysts and experts believe that the next logical step is to take the technology to the street—quite literally.

Many believe that it is only a matter of time before mobile VoIP technology begins to proliferate within the SME as much as fixed VoIP solutions. The progression is all a part of the convergence between voice and data that is evolving every day, experts say.

“At the end of the day, convergence is at all levels,” says Monica Pal, founder of LignUp (www.lignup.com), a VoIP software company. “Me, as a human being, I want to converge my work and my home life. I want to converge my communications—I have all of these devices, but I would rather be able to communicate with whatever is convenient for me.”

Like Pal, many people are increasingly looking for ways to converge their business and home lives, their entertainment and their business needs, and their connectivity options into as few devices as possible. As busy executives and salespeople crave connectivity, demand is also growing in the enterprise and SME market space for mobile VoIP technology.

Cellular VoIP—Not There Yet

According to Lisa Pierce, analyst for Forrester Research, cellular carriers are not yet ready to provide full VoIP service through their infrastructures. Current high-speed cellular technology such as EVDO is too slow, and while UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) may be able to support VoIP, it is currently too expensive for carriers to deploy on a wide scale.

“From a real service that a carrier is endorsing [it will be] something more than two years—between two and five years,” Pierce says.

The attitudes of carriers are starting to change, however, as they see that if they can’t beat the VoIP market, they can join it. The bigwigs at carrier networks are in the process of refining what is called the IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), which is an architecture that supports the integration of cellular technology and wireless data with VoIP protocols and applications. Basically, it is what will enable the large providers to enter the market by providing better ways to create dual-mode functional products and enable large-scale deployments.

According to Pal, IMS provides the foundation for SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), the standard for VoIP communication, to be able to work over existing carrier infrastructure. From there, vendors such as LignUp are given a platform to create a whole slew of VoIP software that can allow developers to build Web applications that utilize the technology to automate calls over the data stream and to integrate VoIP into existing applications.

“And so really, at the application server level, thanks to architectures like IMS and thanks to standards like SIP, we can actually provide our services across all of these networks,” Pal says.

Application Development

So with better architecture in place and carrier networks working to make VoIP feasible for business, what are third-party vendors creating to make it all worthwhile? In other words, why should SMEs care?

According to Pal, businesses should pay attention to the big-picture implications even before cost savings. With better integration, organizations will be able to more easily deploy software that simplifies communication-related processes and improves productivity.

“You can now build these applications that you couldn’t build as easily before. In the past when you talked about VoIP you had to be a very sophisticated developer—you needed to know telecommunications before you could build an application,” Pal says. “What we’ve done is we’ve made it easy so that any Web developer can mash up their own application for VoIP.”

For example, a medical practice may have spent many man-hours having its office staff call patients to confirm appointments that are already in the practice’s computer system. According to Pal, software such as LignUp’s can more easily allow that already-existing information to be translated into automated phone calls. Similarly, a large organization could use the automation to better keep in touch with employees. If employees are using VoIP-enabled mobile technology, this is where the cost-saving kicks in.

“If it is a VoIP phone, really what that means is that it is going over a VoIP network all the way to the end, so it is effectively free,” Pal says. “You don’t have to go to the PSTN [public switched telephone network] and pay toll charges. So, the advantage to being a VoIP phone or a SIP client on a cell phone is that you’re using that data channel.”

This can mean incredible cost-savings for a highly distributed global company that would otherwise pay through the nose in international telecommunications

End-User Technology

While there are plenty of developments needed before mobile VoIP technology is the norm, it is becoming mature enough to support end-user technology. The reason being that while we wait for cellular offerings, technologists are taking advantages of the widespread availability of Wi-Fi, combined with cellular coverage, to optimize mobile telecommunications’ availability and affordability.

According to a Forrester survey last year, half of North American enterprises are interested in dual-mode Wi-Fi-cellular phones. But many of these businesses are waiting now for VoWLAN headsets to come down in price and for better carrier infrastructure.

“There is great demand for dual-mode technology. Corporations are really looking at that for intracampus and intracompany applications,” Pierce says. “If it turns out I’ve got a lot of people calling to and from cell phones when they are in the work building and I’m trying to control cellular expenses, that is a possibility.”

Additionally, many companies are hoping to maximize their investments in IP PBX over recent years among those workers that may not be at their desks all of the time.

“It hardly makes sense for me to buy $300 to $500 SIP phones that’ll sit on a desktop if 30% of my employees are literally mobile out and about in the wide world. It doesn’t make sense for that part of my population, and it may not make sense for some other part of my population that is infrequently at their desks,” Pierce says. “Then certainly dual-mode makes sense for them because you’re trying to reach John, not John’s desk. So it is a productivity issue.”

Soft phone software such as applications developed by IP Blue and TABLETmedia for PDAs and mobile devices are hitting the market to great acclaim.

Wi-Fi phones styled after cell phones are being released at more reasonable prices—for example, Netgear’s Skype WiFi phone is less than $250 today. And cell phone manufacturers and carriers are working to release new dual-mode phones that utilize cellular and VoIP technology to get over coverage issues. Two of the newest models include the Nokia 6136 and the Motorola A910.

But perhaps most important is that drive for convergence that Pal speaks about. As manufacturers of all devices begin to layer multiple functions into smaller devices—cell phones that store music, Wi-Fi-enabled iPods, and more—adding VoIP functionality will be a no-brainer.

Source: www.processor.com

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