The future for VoFi?—Posted on July 14, 2007
The potential of VoFi – Voice over WiFI - to redefine the mobile market is real, but I don’t think we’re going to see any major changes happening any time soon. In the long term, the cost benefits of using wireless VoIP instead of traditional voice over GSM could be a compelling proposition for businesses, but the technology needs to be proven and seamless before it can really deliver.
However loud the industry shouts about VoFi, the fact is that this is a new technology, albeit one with lots of potential. The industry is working hard to iron out some of the teething troubles, but at the moment we’re still seeing issues with call quality and the performance of VoFi handsets.
Call quality can be an issue because the VoFi connection usually has to share limited bandwidth with all other WiFi traffic, such as data – and voice isn’t given priority. It’s only the really established, business-focused providers that are delivering WiFi access with a low contention ratio and packet prioritisation to ensure that voice quality is assured. So this problem can be overcome, but it is up to the user to choose their provider very carefully.
So far, the overall user experience with VoFi phones has been questionable. Users expect to be able to make phone calls using any WiFi hotspot, but a lot of pure VoFi phones lack the web interface that is essential to access most public WiFi services. Without a web interface, you can’t set up an account and provide the payment details that the service provider requires. So, no web interface means patchy and unpredictable access to WiFi hotspots. This issue is being addressed – we saw new handsets with web interfaces launch at 3GSM.
Another concern is power and energy consumption. Battery life may not be the most exciting subject, but it is pretty critical when you’re away from the office for long periods and completely dependent on your mobile to stay in touch. VoFi handsets are power hungry, so their battery life is much shorter than we’re all used to with mobiles. This is a major practical drawback for the typical business user, who is getting more and more accustomed to accessing all sorts of useful applications on their mobile device. Applications eat power, so this often isn’t viable on a VoFi device.
Fixing these issues is clearly a major priority for equipment manufacturers and we’re seeing improved VoFi handsets start to appear. There will be a new generation of much more efficient and user-friendly handsets in the future, which can only encourage the growth of this technology. Awareness of the need for uncontended, enterprise-quality WiFi services that can support voice calls is also key – however cheap the calls, business users have to have quality and reliability. Once these issues are resolved, the case for VoFi will start to stack up. How soon this happens, and how entrenched it ever becomes, remains to be seen.