Voice over Wi-Fi on a huge roll…
The recent announcements from Cablevision and FreedomPop demonstrate a continuing interest in the development and launch of Voice over Wi-Fi services.
Both developments – again – highlight the many use and business cases for Wi-Fi and provide yet another example of monetization being top of the agenda for businesses.
Alternative network models, i.e. ‘virtual carriers’ are opening up access to large networks of Wi-Fi access points and are showing the need for evermore increasing ubiquity and seamless QoS, and also protection of customer information. Security will be a key concern for MVNO’s of this kind and this can only be minimized with the right implementation of proper authentication and security. Technologies like NGH and Passpoint/Hotspot 2.0 can provide security, roaming, seamlessness and authentication to providers of Wi-Fi-based voice services.
Equally, ongoing approaches such as this could have a positive effect on the requirements of spectrum allocation for more ubiquitous Wi-Fi, which is echoed in the recent statement by FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. She stated that “government needs to do a better job of allocating spectrum for unlicensed access, such as Wi-Fi.” She also emphasized the importance of Wi-Fi and the role it plays in the economy. For example, she noted more than half of Americans have used public hotspots.
While recent announcements suggest that the launch of these services remain exclusive to the US, this is actually not the case at all. Already in 2013 and 2014, European telco companies such as Ziggo, O2/Telefonica and 3 UK have launched their own Voice-over-Wi-Fi offerings to their customers, either by creating an MVNO offering (Ziggo) or offering it an extension to their own fixed or mobile voice services.
Echoing the importance of this topic the WBA will soon be launching a project to look into Wi-Fi calling opportunity in the industry and produce a guidelines document that will help the ecosystem including operators, service providers and device vendors in the industry. Send us an email at contactus@wballiance.com if you are interested in more information or participating.
