Ken Kolderup has been selling Wi-Fi to device makers since 2004, when he remembers “trying to convince Samsung to put Wi-Fi into flip phones.” Kolderup, who heads up marketing for Kineto, says his job has gotten a lot easier. It’s also about to get a lot more interesting, as Kolderup and the rest of the Kineto team (minus the CEO and CFO) are now joining Taqua. Taqua decided to purchase Kineto after the two companies worked together to enable Wi-Fi calling for Sprint.
“We started working together at Sprint a couple of years ago in helping Sprint evolve its femtocell proposition to also allow for voice-over-Wi-Fi, where the Taqua virtual mobile core is the infrastructure supporting that, and it’s our client supporting the handsets,” said Kolderup. “We started working together more and more and we found ourselves engaged with a couple dozen operators around the world. … It always ended up being the two companies. Then all of a sudden we saw the Apple announcement and the reaction from the operators. … This has the potential to accelerate really quickly, and together we’ll be able to really capitalize on the opportunity.”
Taqua’s virtual mobile core enables voice over Wi-Fi, as well as voice over LTE. It can be deployed in IMS and pre-IMS networks. Kineto provides the mobile client that enables Wi-Fi calling. The client can be pre-loaded by the device maker or downloaded by the end user, depending on the service provider’s preference.
“We can now offer mobile service providers a truly disruptive solution that enables the rapid, cost effective deployment of Wi-Fi Calling services,” said Taqua CEO Eric Pratt.
“This actually solves a real customer problem,” said Kolderup. “Somewhere between 10% to low 20% of subscribers still have very poor voice coverage, or no voice coverage, in the place where they spend most of their time, at home.” He said femtocells are one solution, but the cost can be prohibitive.
“The vast majority of subscribers now have smartphones, the vast majority of them have Wi-Fi at home, and the vast majority are automatically connecting their smartphones to Wi-Fi when they walk into the home,” he said. “The subscribers have pretty much teed up the solution for the operators.”
Kolderup notes that virtually all T-Mobile’s smartphones now support voice over Wi-Fi and he thinks Sprint will soon follow suit. News that Apple will support voice over Wi-Fi with iOS 8 has “opened the box” for many operators, Kolderup said.
Wi-Fi first is another catalyst in this market and could get a lot more attention if rumors of a Google MVNO prove true. “There are a lot of operators that come from the fixed line world that have MVNO operations in a lot of countries that are really looking at adopting that strategy,” said Kolderup.
Follow me on Twitter.
