Wireless ubiquity

Wireless technology is showing the ability to extend its tentacles further and further into a little bit of everything lately. Strong evidence of that has come from the voice-over-IP sector in the past few months, when several VoIP providers added Wi-Fi components to their strategies--Vonage by linking with Boingo Wireless and Net2Phone by launching a Wi-Fi compatible handset. At the Voice on the Net show in October, VoIP guru Jeff Pulver called the intersection of Wi-Fi and VoIP one of the biggest opportunities in the sector.

Now comes speculation that the otherwise unrelated timing of so many next-gen mobile network expansions and wireline carriers' fiber extensions to support video service ultimately could be linked--albeit somewhere further down the road. Two analysts commented to Telephony this week--Millennium Marketing principal Kermit Ross during the taping of a Webcast that will launch in early 2005, and Vesbridge Partners VC Rod Randall for an article that will appear in next week's issue of Telephony--that mobile extension of video clips and other visual applications could have a play in wireline carriers' plans to compete with cable carriers.

It makes sense, if you believe what these technology expansions will be able to do and are able to envision future applications with a certain degree of clarity--and faith. As a standalone, wireless video still seems somewhat like a novelty technology. But tie it into landline video efforts by telcos--many of which are the owners and operators of mobile networks--and add in the storage and graphics capabilities with which mobile devices are increasingly equipped, and it becomes a more obvious service extension and one more way telecom service providers can differentiate their video plays from wireless-lacking cable operators.

The convergence of wireline and wireless video applications certainly is further away from reality than the integration of VoIP and Wi-Fi, which is close and economical enough that it should be giving wireline carriers one more reason to sweat about their already-leaking voice services revenues. What will be the next technology sector where wireless will emerge as a logical application accompaniment?

E-mail me your ideas at jmeyers@primediabusiness.com.