SIP gives mobile ops the edge - Analyst
23 February 2006
As VoIP over wifi using unlicensed mobile access (UMA) technologies is presently hamstrung by a lack of available handsets, the initiative in the wireless VoIP race could be handed to mobile operators.
British Telecom and France Telecom, both of which are pioneering wireless VoIP over UMA, are increasingly looking towards the end of this year before they can allow users to make calls over wifi, according to industry analyst Ovum.
BT, which has already launched its Fusion offering, can only at present offer calls over Bluetooth or cellular. The wifi part of the equation will be absent until the third quarter, when Motorola makes its wifi-enabled handset available.
France Telecom/Orange meanwhile is anticipating Nokia will deliver a wifi-enabled handset to it during the second quarter.
Meanwhile, operators such as Telefonica Moviles, which are using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to drive their wireless VoIP strategy look set to stream ahead in the future.
Carrie Pawsey, telecoms analyst at Ovum, said that BT's Fusion product, in its current incarnation, looks set to remain a UK-based offering.
"This is mainly because of issues such as billing integration with Vodafone, BT's cellular partner, which is still some way off," Pawsey said.
Although UMA is 3GPP standards-based, "SIP and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) implementations have a longer term and much clearer evolutionary roadmap," she said, "although the offering is a bit limited today."
Earlier this month, Telefonica Moviles introduced a demonstration VoIP offering using a SIP-based client preloaded onto a USB stick.
The operator tapped supplier Outsmart to deliver its SmartFMC fixed mobile convergence system, which allows the same services that are currently available on Telefonica Moviles' mobile phones to be accessible via a PC.
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