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Merging WiFi VoIP Into Cellular Service
Anonymous Coward writes "The New York Times (registration required) reports that
Motorola, Proxim and Avaya are expected to announce today that they will jointly develop technology to allow wireless communications to jump between networks without interruption.
This appears to involve making use of WiFi for phone service where it's available, thus converting WiFi hotspots into congestion relief for overloaded cellular networks, and, of course, making cell phones into WiFi terminals."
Doesn't this mean that cellphone congestion will now lead to degraded wifi performance?
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
I'm sure this is what telcos have seen coming and have been scared shitless of. This will prevent them from ever making UMTS into a commercial success, especially taking into account they payed far to much for licensing the (yet-to-be-used) UMTS frequencies.
I guess VoIP over WLAN won't do much to their current markets, since high bandwidth isn't an issue for voice. But it seems they've lost the battle for data even before it's started...
Or can commercial UMTS and open WLAN coexist?
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Don't know if we already have this or not, but don't we first need a common voice protocol that is agreed upon and used by all? Kind of like something as ubiqious as TCP?
The last time I checked most of today's phones aren't even hardware compatible with most other carrier networks, and phone manufactures have resorted to having to put 3 different protocols in one phone (tri-mode, etc.). Talk about inefficient.
Wouldn't it be easier if all wireless communication just ran on one set protocol that worked over multiple frequencies? Nevermind the differences in modulation at 900 MHz, 2.4 and 5 GHz, I'm talking about a true high-level/low-level protocol here.
There is no way you're going to be able to stuff an 802.11b/a transceiver into an already high priced, low battery life phone.
If we had a set protocol for doing all things wireless, then it wouldn't be a matter of what physical network you're on, even what type of network you're using or who owns it.
That seems like what they are trying to do, but this seems a little late in the game. People just didn't realize all the wireless capacity we have right now just floating around -- the only problem is you need x device that supports x protocols and sometimes you need to purchase directly from the wireless carrier. I guess until now, when we have dozens of different standards and NOW we want to connect them all together.
The sad thing about it is if such a device were to be created that could mitigate across all these different protocols and networks, it's going to be one huge complex mess and is going to cost a fortune, when it didn't have to be. Maybe government regulation and forced standards are sometimes a GOOD thing.
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Cellular operators perceive WiFi as a threat, because there has been long feared that cheap, community operated wireless networks ("guerilla networks" in corporate speak) would wipe out operators own WiFi offerings. What seems to anger operators most is that the whole concept of local wireless networks is not in line with the operators' idea of monetizing every single byte transmitted over the air. Also operators feared that someone would come up with an VoIP-WLAN phone that would offer very cheap voice calls in the WLAN range. WLAN networks.
Now the impact of this new device (and system) that this partnership is going to produce depends on whether it would be oriented towards operators (and would thus require deep integration with GSM operator's infrastructure) or rather corporate customers (and would therefore be more like an software over-the-Internet VPN solution but also for voice communication). I think the first option is more likely and then the operators would be in position to control to some extent the WiFi market with local WLAN operators reduced to being just local bandwidth providers. The most important part of making this work would be the SIM card (or its equivalent) identifying the user and interfaces connecting a registry of users to authentication mechanisms of various visited networks. Most of that is what GSM operators already have.
I was wondering when that will happen. Especially with all the delays in getting 3G up and running and with the high costs of getting normal mobile telephony switches to do higher bandwidth through all kinds of tweaks and compression, it just makes sense to use a tried and tested technology. They could mountstrong wifi antennas on each current basestation and use that for multimedia phones. That will also solve the problem of a manager sending a 101x80 res video clip of his new porsche to his mother and thereby congesting all voice traffic on that cell.
I think this should be researched further and implemented.
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Seamless handoff between 802.11 and CDMA was demonstrated at the recently concluded CDMA Americas congress.
Motorola is in trouble because they are missing the 3G-boat in a big way. Their infrastructure implementations of both 1xRTT and WCDMA suck, and they are getting no orders. They have chosen not to implement 1xEV-DO. So right now, they have no data solution to offer their customers. They are coasting based on their handset sales, and their proprietary lock on Nextel. This announcement is just another tactic to muddy the waters and to buy them time from relentless competition from Nortel, Lucent and Samsung.
Magnus.