WASHINGTON-Wireless Voice over Internet Protocol is here with the advent of Qualcomm Inc.’s CDMA2000 1x EV-DO service as deployed by Verizon Wireless, said Brooke Schulz, vice president of corporate communications for Vonage Corp.
Schulz demonstrated a Vonage VoIP call via EV-DO technology, brand-named Broadband Access, last week as part of a breakfast panel sponsored by the New Millennium Research Council.
“There are a lot of misconceptions out there that wireless is too slow and that there is too much latency, but as you can see, it works just fine,” said Schulz.
In addition to VoIP services being used by advanced wireless networks and Wi-Fi, the Schulz example also showed that Vonage over EV-DO can be used to call mobile phones without a loss of call quality.
Ironically, the original Vonage demonstration was supposed to use a landline broadband connection but the venue where the breakfast was held was not wired for such access so Vonage was forced to go wireless.
Other products allow VoIP calls to be made over Wi-Fi networks, but if someone does not know you are using a cordless VoIP phone, it would look like a call was being made over a cellular network, said David Young, director of Internet and technology policy for Verizon Corp.
“Voice over Wi-Fi looks like a cellular call, but it is just an application over Wi-Fi,” said Young.
Young’s company has a wireless subsidiary, so he is more likely to acknowledge the present availability of wireless VoIP, but David Reed, executive vice president of Cable Labs, said wireless broadband is “in the future.”
As the morning progressed from a technology demonstration to a policy discussion, Rick Cimerman, senior director of state telecommunications policy for the National Cable Telecommunications Association, said there has been a large focus on the responsibilities of VoIP providers, such as providing enhanced 911 and access to law enforcement, but not much on the rights of VoIP operators.
These operators, which hope to be classified as information service providers in an attempt to escape telecom regulation, need access to the rights that are given to telecommunications carriers, said Cimerman. “Even if you are not a telecom carrier, you need access,” he said. RCR
