Mobility and Voice over IP

It is not a too-well-kept secret that my "day job" is that of a senior engineer, selling and designing Voice over IP networks, primarily in the Call Center arena.  The growth of my company's business over the past year has been phenomenal, partly due to our own processes, applications and designs and partly due to the ever increasing demand for VoIP technology.  Without going too much into a sales mode here, VoIP is faster, cheaper and far more flexible than traditional telephony.  There have been countless examples, especially around hurricane Katrina here in the US, that also prove that VoIP is the best solution for disaster recovery scenarios.

As Voice over IP has continued to grow, many of the companies who produce VoIP solutions have also developed wireless solutions to support the technology.  A case in point is Cisco Systems, the leader in the VoIP marketplace.  Cisco has in the past 4 years developed a series of phone that support VoIP while running wirelessly.  These phones run on 802.11x, allowing an enterprise who has a Cisco telephony solution in place as well as wireless access points to distribute phones that can "roam" while in their wireless coverage area.  A good example of use is in the Call Center arena where supervisors may be walking the floor and not necessarily be at a desk.  By having the WiFi/VoIP solution, they can still take calls and virtually be at their desk.

Switching to the residential implications of VoIP, here in the United States one of the biggest VoIP providers is Vonage.  Vonage gives people who have broadband connectivity to eliminate their local telco by switching to a VoIP solution while still, in most cases, keeping their original phone number.  The cost of Vonage compared to traditional telco's is substantially less and the adoption rate of their solution continues to grow at an impressive if not staggering rate.

How then do mobile devices take advantage of what is clearly a growing and important market?

To be sure, there are today Voice over IP solution available today for Windows Mobile devices and other platforms.  The most well known of these is probably Skype, a product that is now owned by eBay.  Skype allows users to make a Voice over IP call from their wireless Windows Mobile device.  Even users of Windows Mobile Phone Edition users can utilize Skype, saving them on the costs of their cellular service and minutes.  The adoption rate of Skype and other products continues to grow and there is little indication that it will slow down.  Indeed other developers, including Microsoft, are introducing or will shortly introduce VoIP clients for Windows Mobile devices.

During my week at Mobius, we had a terrific presentation on the future of Windows Mobile from Erick Eidus, a Senior Project Planner for Microsoft in the Windows Mobile arena.  Erick's presentation covered a lot of the industry trends in the market and some of the future of the platform itself.  Going forward, parts of the Windows Mobile Operating System "stack" will include things such as UMTS, Video Telephony and Instant Messaging Services or IMS.  When these will appear in Windows Mobile is unclear at this point and based on Erick's conversation, it will take the cellular carriers input and adoption as well.

A key point in Erick's presentation concerned Quality of Service, or QoS.  QoS allows network engineers within an enterprise to give priority to certain types of traffic based on classifications.  For example, FTP may been given a lower priority class simply because in most enterprises the ability to FTP and the speed at which it works is far less important than email or voice traffic.  This ability to classify traffic types is important as more and more companies adopt VoIP technologies and converge their voice and data networks into one.  Today, it is difficult even at a consumer level not to find routers and access points that do not have some type of QoS functionality.  Obviously at the enterprise level the functions and features are greater but even my Linksys WRT54G router has QoS functionality both for the Ethernet and WiFi functions.  Erick pointed out that in future builds of Windows Mobile, the OS itself will have the ability to classify traffic on the device itself.  This is a fundamentally changing direction in the future of Windows Mobile.

By allowing Windows Mobile devices the ability to classify traffic, VoIP has instantly become a real player in the mobile world.  No longer will voice be treated as all other data.  It can be given a higher priority, thus allowing users to do multiple functions on their device and not "crush" the voice call.

So imagine two different scenarios.  The first is a Windows Mobile user who is accessing a public WiFi hotspot.  With a QoS enabled device, the traffic that they would be sending would be classified.  At the back end of the hotspot, where the Internet interface on the router is located, QoS is enabled there as well and is configured to give VoIP the highest priority.  The Windows Mobile user would then be able to make his calls via his VoIP provider and his voice traffic would be the priority on both the device and the hotspot, perhaps to the detriment of the chap in the corner trying to FTP his project up to the corporate server.  Now, instead of having to carry both a cellular phone and a Windows Mobile device, the user can carry one and still know that they can receive and place phone calls.

The second would be the enterprise.  Most enterprises have QoS in the Core and Distribution layers of their networks and some even down to the Access layer while also incorporating WiFi into their network.  The enterprise can then distribute desktop VoIP phones while also distributing clients for their Windows Mobile users.  These users could then, based on where they will be that day, either use their desktop phone or can use the client on their device to virtually move their phone number to their device.  Now that person can go anywhere in the companies network - even to different locations in different cities - and still place and receive calls on their Windows Mobile device as if they were sitting at their desk.  Companies can save on cellular charges that are often charged back to the company by employees on the road or remote as well as provide the employee with one number by which they can be reached.  The return on investment, even for companies who provided the Windows Mobile devices themselves, would be short - shockingly short.

So how far away are these scenarios from becoming reality?  That is difficult to answer because of the many factors outlined already.  Given the development that is happening both in the Windows Mobile arena and the network infrastructure arena, I suspect within the next 2-4 years.  It isn't a matter of demand.  It is clear by the sales of Skype and the adoption rate of VoIP enterprise and residential networks and services that it is a mainstay in the market. 

It comes down to the devices itself at this point.  If Microsoft, OEMs and carriers of Windows Mobile devices understand the growth potential of VoIP in the market, the window of time from now to availability will be short.

Clinton Fitch
Senior Editor
Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! (http://www.clintonfitch.com)
HPC:Factor (http://www.hpcfactor.com)