Taipei Rolls Out Citywide Wireless-VoIP Network
July 9th, 2006 - Posted in VoIPThe city government of Taipei, in the island state of Taiwan, expects to have 200,000 inhabitants making phone calls using VoIP over citywide Wi-Fi by the end of this year.
Ten firms are involved in promoting the “Taipei Easy Call” project, which consists of rolling out Internet-based mobile phones that can switch between calls made using Wi-Fi and traditional cellular networks. Taipei Easy Call, which was officially inaugurated by the city government on July 5, will run over Taipei’s city-wide “WiFly” Wi-Fi network.
Reports quoted Daniel Wong, a spokesperson for the Taipei Computer Association, as saying that if the initiative is successful, then the model could be copied in other cities elsewhere around the globe.
Whole City Involved
Wong was quoted in press reports as saying that the Taipei Easy Call project is significant because it involves the world’s first Internet telephony system that uses an entire city — rather than a hotspot here and there — as a wireless communications environment. He predicted that some 200,000 subscribers would sign up for the service by the end of this year.
As part of the project, Taipei-based schools and government agencies will be moved over from the conventional telephone network to a system based on Internet phones using VoIP.
By the end of next month, hundreds of public middle and elementary schools in Taipei will be equipped with a VoIP system and several hundred thousand school children, parents, and teachers will be urged to make their calls over the Internet. The city’s administrators hope that the funds saved as a result of using VoIP telephony in schools will help to pay for improved food for students.
Taipei’s mayor, Ma Ying-jeou, said at the launch of the project that the city hope to save New Taiwan the equivalent of about $1 million a year.
Concerns Expressed
Phil Marshall, a Yankee Group analyst, expressed some concern as to the complexity of the initiative.
“This is certainly pushing the limits of Wi-Fi,” he said. “I expect that the network will have significant challenges in scaling to support this service and that subscribers are going to be disappointed with the system performance.”
A report on Wi-Fi technologies by Forrester Research analysts Charles S. Golvin, Lars Godell, and Michelle De Lussanet warned that VoIP over Wi-Fi will not make a real impact until 2010 because problems with call quality still need to be fixed.
Until that point, the report predicted, the main use for Wi-Fi will be data transmission.
Source: newsfactor.com