Conference panel debates future of VoIP applications

CHICAGO--

While service providers are deploying voice-over-IP network infrastructure with an eye on delivering new revenue-generating applications, many of the specifics surrounding those new applications remain a question mark. The future of this market was the subject of “At Your Service: The Applications Value of VoIP,” a panel discussion held Monday during Telephony’s “VoIP: Service Providers Strategy” conference and moderated by the magazine’s executive news editor Vince Vittore.

According to a recent end user survey conducted by market research firm Infonetics, VoIP applications are not yet on the radar of the mass market; the majority of consumers are currently looking to VoIP almost exclusively for basic telephony services. “Small businesses also want customer management,” said Kevin Mitchell, directing analyst of service provider networks and next gen voice at Infonetics. “It’s a rehash of the TDM world.”

TDM was also a point of reference for Daniel Hoffman, president and CEO of outsourced IP phone system provider M5. “[The VoIP killer app] could be unified messaging, or it could be instant messaging,” Hoffman said. “But a lot of these features can also be delivered by TDM. It’s very hard to say what features will take off.”

Accordingly, VoIP must first differentiate itself from legacy technologies in other ways. “Applications sell, but people buy reliability,” said Mark Whittier, vice president of corporate marketing for hosted IP telephony solutions provider VocalData. “At this stage of the market, more service providers are focusing first on familiar features and delivering them with reliability, security and service.”

But VoIP will also enable applications that TDM can’t, among them presence management, multimedia and collaboration services. “Adoption will be compelled by convenience, content and control,” Whittier said. “We’ll see VoIP extended to device mobility as fast as the technology can figure out how to do it. Content will drive multimedia collaboration, especially video, and control will drive converged applications. VoIP is a readymade medium for controlling how systems talk to systems, how people talk to each other, and how people talk to systems.”

In the meantime, VoIP adoption remains slow despite growing provider and customer interest. And while applications will no doubt enhance the technology’s appeal, for now VoIP’s pricetag remains its biggest selling point. “More and more people are conducting some portion of their jobs from home, and VoIP is perfect for that,” said Bryan Sheppeck, vice president of sales at softswitch and broadband product developer Telica. “But consumers don’t factor in productivity—they look at price. When people aren’t buying VoIP for flat-rate pricing but to take their service to their vacation home, that’s a much stickier surface.”