VoIP deja vu

WILL MOBILE VOIP providers have the same success as Skype and Vonage had? Some industry analysts are skeptical.

“With applications like that, you're opening up Pandora's box,” said Roger Entner, senior vice president of the communications sector for IAG Research. Some consumers and mobile VoIP providers view mobile VoIP as a free lunch, Entner said, “but if they're successful, the price of data plans will go up because carriers are cannibalizing their voice revenues.”

It's less clear how traditional carriers might respond to Wi-Fi-based VoIP, but such offerings may pose a less serious threat to revenues. “If you thought cellular had a lot of coverage holes, good luck,” Entner quipped.

Mobile VoIP may make sense for people who do a lot of international calling, said Iain Gillott, president of research firm iGR. But for most people, he said, “it's a heck of a lot of trouble to go to in order to avoid paying a few bucks; the drivers are not as compelling as in the landline space.”

Gillott added that traditional carriers could easily respond if they were to find that a large number of people were using alternative providers to make mobile VoIP calls. “All it would take is a little marketing and packaging by the carriers to address that one,” he said.

When landline VoIP began to catch on, AT&T responded with its CallVantage VoIP offering, while Verizon launched VoiceWing. If history were to repeat itself, we could see traditional wireless carriers launching similar offerings for mobile users.

Gillott expects carriers to take their time before making that move, however. “The big guys will do it when the quality of service is sufficient that my wife and my dad don't complain about voice quality,” he said. “They will do it on their own terms when they're ready.”

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