Convergence of 3G and VoIP & IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystems)

location based services

This is where things start to get really interesting. The convergence of 3G (high speed, “always on” Internet access) and VoIP drastically changes the playing field. If a mobile operator were to offer Internet access, without any value added service(s), then they would become nothing more than a wireless ISP. At that point, the only thing mobile operators can compete on is cost and generally whoever has the lowest cost wins. Let me give you an example:

Suppose you’re paying $30/month for your 3G mobile phone plan that includes 1,000 minutes of talk time and Internet access. Suppose your friends (possibly even in other countries) are doing the same. If you all have VoIP clients, why would any of you use your 1,000 minutes AND pay long distance charges? Once both parties are online on the packet switched network, the VoIP client will treat it as a free PC to PC call. Basically, by using VoIP you’ve got unlimited minutes as well as free long distance calling! This is obviously a problem for the operators because there isn’t much incremental income anymore! Mobile operators are much smarter than this, so of course they’ve come up with a solution to this dilemma. That solution is IMS.

IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem)

In order to differentiate themselves, mobile operators can offer a variety of IMS services. IMS is essentially a ‘cloud’ of multimedia applications (voice, video, etc.) that can be offered (and managed) by the operator. Using IMS, the operator can now provide their OWN VoIP services and charge rates that they feel are suitable. You might be asking yourself “Well, what’s stopping me from using my own VoIP client and bypassing their IMS?” For one, mobile operators could have policies restricting VoIP such as T-Mobile UK’s ban on VoIP usage for their Super3G service. [1]
Assuming they don’t have such policies, odds are that they will treat their own VoIP with higher priority than standard IP traffic; thus, you would get much higher quality calls using their proprietary VoIP clients/systems.

Besides VoIP there are many other services that IMS can provide. The beauty of IMS is that is in independent of the device (mobile phone, laptop, desktop PC, PDA, etc.) being used as long as it is used on a packet switched (IP) network. IMS opens up a whole new market of products and services. Many companies such as Ericsson are doing a lot of research into IMS because it is clear that this is where the money is (or will be). The last part of this report will look at a few services that will be possible with IMS.

Presence/Location Areas
In order to offer this service, the provider would have to be closely tied to the operator (or could be the operator itself). Since the mobile is constantly telling the base stations where it is, you could offer location based services to tell the user (or their friends) where they are; this can be combined with GPS systems to get directions to and from locations.

Opt-in Targeted Advertising
If you know the location of the person you can send them appropriate targeted advertising. For instance, if you’re walking downtown and you walk by a movie theatre you could automatically get notified if it’s playing movies that you like, give you the show times and even offer the ability to purchase the movie tickets via your phone.

Comfort Noise Selection
Comfort noise hasn’t been discussed in this report but in short: VoIP doesn’t transmit silence (because it wastes bandwidth). However, studies have shown that if a user hears silence they get worried and often think the connection is dead. Thus, white noise (also known as comfort noise) is generated on the receiving end if no voice/sound is coming in. As opposed to generating white noise, it might be interesting if you can select sounds as if the person is at the beach, or at the office, or any other place!

Language Translation
This is probably the most interesting one. Combining speech recognition, translation and text-to-speech software can give you a very powerful tool. Imagine this scenario: You speak English into a VoIP client; the codec takes your voice and turns it into text; the text is then translated into German and using text-to-speech the system outputs what you said in German to the listener. Pretty cool, huh? Skype is already offering live translation for $2.99USD/minute but the translation is still being done by humans; perhaps we will see this idea eventually! [2]

This report has shown how packet switching and VoIP have totally changed the business landscape of mobile telephone services. This is a constantly evolving market and it will be very fascinating to see how all this plays out as VoIP has implications in almost all areas of our lives (entertainment, legal, socioeconomic, etc.). VoIP has definitely shaken up the traditional phone companies and is proving to be a disturbance in the mobile phone arena as well. However, given that most mobile operators are “fresh blood” in the telecom industry they have, thus far, shown a willingness to change, adapt to and embrace IP technology. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em...

References:
[1] T-Mobile Bans VoIP from Super-3G Service (ZDNet UK Article)
[2] Skype Language Line Personal