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The summer of 2014 could be labeled as the “Summer of voice over Wi-Fi” since the service seemed to come out of nowhere and get a lot of attention. Both Sprint and T-Mobile US now have VoWi-Fi services in the market, and Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility have expressed interest. Solutions are available in the market from folks such as Mavenir and Taqua. In fact, VoWi-Fi has been around for a while. Many enterprises have voice-over-wireless local area network handsets that use the Wi-Fi network and T-Mobile US actually launched a home voice Wi-Fi service a couple of years ago as a substitute for an indoor femtocell. But, the VoWi-Fi moniker has definitely gotten more attention in 2014.
So what is all the fuss about? After all, Wi-Fi and voice services have been around for a while now and are certainly not new. In fact, voice is the oldest mobile service – remember when they were called mobile phones and not smartphones? The phone actually implied the use of your voice to talk to someone; this was pre-text messaging when adults actually had to converse with their teens, rather than just text them.
Wi-Fi has been commonplace in the U.S. home for many years and now about 90% of homes have one or more Wi-Fi access points. Most homes with broadband Internet access now have Wi-Fi simply because their cable/U-verse/FiOS set-top box includes a Wi-Fi access point and router. And 3G mobile voice was extended to homes with poor coverage (like mine) through the use of a femtocell (AT&T Mobility and Sprint, predominantly) or a signal booster.
So why is VoWi-Fi suddenly on everyone’s conference agenda and editorial calendar? I think the answer has much to do with voice over LTE and the realization that extending VoLTE indoors may be more costly and difficult than first imagined. Let me explain.
Many homes in the U.S. have poor indoor cellular service coverage for a variety of reasons: where the home is located; construction of the home; dense trees around the house; or the home is simply caught on the edge between two cells. The net result is that many consumers have problems making calls from inside the home (me included). As more people have ditched their landlines, this has become a bigger issue. (iGR has research on this and a range of statistics.) So the answer, in the case of AT&T Mobility and Sprint, was to give/sell femtocells to problem consumers; these are indoor small cells that provide four to five “bars” of service in the home. Other people have installed signal boosters, which have the added bonus of being carrier-agnostic.
This has worked well in a 2G and 3G world. Remember, since most homes have Wi-Fi, there has been minimal need to provide mobile data service in homes; the femtocells and signal boosters have primarily been there for voice.
Now the macro cellular networks are moving to LTE and, as you know, VoLTE. This means that to make a voice call in a building, LTE service must be in the building. In homes or buildings where indoor coverage is a problem, making a VoLTE call will be difficult. So the options for the operators are to either offer an LTE femtocell (and replace the existing 3G femtocells over time); support signal boosters, which operators in the U.S. are reluctant to do – less so in other countries; or use VoWi-Fi.
Since the home is highly likely to have Wi-Fi already and the new smartphones include support for VoWi-Fi, offering a VoWi-Fi solution to compliment VoLTE would seem to make sense. T-Mobile US’ service hands off VoWi-Fi calls to and from VoLTE, so from the consumer perspective it is seamless.
The issue for the mobile operator of course is that they have no control over the quality of the Wi-Fi network in the home or building. Nor do they know how it is configured, what generation access points are used or where the dead spots are. A femtocell is a managed part of the radio access network and the operator can “see” the device from their network. For a consumer using VoWi-Fi, if it does not work, they are likely to contact the mobile operator and try to get a diagnosis, rather than address any basic Wi-Fi issues themselves. Once an operator puts their brand on a service, they “own” it in the eyes of the consumer.
But the attraction of VoWi-Fi is obvious for the mobile operator: The implementation is based on software and capabilities already in the new devices. No hardware (femtocells) has to be shipped to the home, installed or paid for, and this potentially reduces the cost significantly. And it makes use of an existing W-Fi network. How this all works out will be interesting to see. VoWi-Fi is likely to play some role in the indoor VoLTE service architecture but may not be for everyone. LTE femtocells may still be deployed but in fewer numbers than the 3G versions and in more select environments. Either way, there are solutions to the issue of getting VoLTE indoors; it is just a matter of the “who, what, where and how.”
Iain Gillott, the founder and president of iGR, is an acknowledged wireless and mobile industry authority and an accomplished presenter. Gillott has been involved in the wireless industry, as both a vendor and analyst, for more than 20 years. IGR was founded in 2000 as iGillottResearch in order to provide in-depth market analysis and data focused exclusively on the wireless and mobile industry. Before founding iGR, Gillott was a Group VP in IDC’s telecommunications practice, managing IDC’s worldwide research on wireless and mobile communications and Internet access, telecom brands, residential and small business telecommunications and telecom billing services. Prior to joining IDC, Gillott was in various technical roles and a proposal manager at EDS (now Hewlett-Packard), responsible for preparing new business proposals to wireless and mobile operators.
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