Whats the Future for Mobile VoIP?
October 9th, 2008One of the biggest developments in the telecommunications industry in recent times has been the emergence of mobile VoIP technology. Although still relatively early days for the mobile Voice over IP operators such as Truphone, it certainly seems they have the capacity to mix things up in the telecoms industry. Some of the recent longer established mobile operators’ actions seem testament to this fact with T-Mobile recently being forced to allow the use of Truphone over its network, having previously blocked calls to Truphone allocated numbers.
While some industry commentators suggest that as VoIP prices fall towards zero, this is making it a increasingly hard industry to make any substantial profit in; the wider availability of low cost high speed broadband and has resulted in a huge surge in the availability of free Wi-Fi. Consequently this is making mobile VoIP operators an increasingly attractive proposition for consumers. The trend in the availability of new ’smart phones’ with the ability to run mobile VoIP client software, at ever decreasing prices is also, it could be argued, creating the ‘perfect storm’.
We have recently seen T-Mobile introduce their Voice over IP service called @home giving customers the option of paying a single low monthly flat rate. However whilst the industry is finding people not entirely willing to give up their fixed phone line completely, mobile VoIP companies have no such obstacle to contend with. The seamless integration of mobile VoIP clients into the functionality of mobile phones, as well as the reduced cost of unlimited data phone packages has resulted in a predictably fast growth in the mobile VoIP sector.
Currently it has been reported that there are 4 million VoIP users in the UK, and this looks set to increase steadily. How established mobile phone operators will take advantage of this growth is still unclear but the decision to force T Mobile to allow calls to Truphone users surely sends out a crystal clear message that rather than try and resist the mobile VoIP operators, the long established industry monoliths must find a way of working with them.
One issue which may have an influence on the amount of subscribers of mobile VoIP is security, with many highly publicized stories highlighting the vulnerabilities in making calls using VoIP. Another issue to to confront is ‘VoIP phishing’ where people are duped into giving up their personal data voluntarily after taking the ‘bait’ from a thief. This is also symptomatic of other VoIP security problems where unscrupulous would be thieves can tamper with the caller ID making it look as though they are calling from reputable financial institutions. Once such issues have been dealt with and fears allayed it is likely that mobile VoIP will become much more prevalent in everyday life as people take the opportunity to turn their mobiles into VoIP phones.
