I’ve just returned from Supercomm and feel a little like Alice in Wonderland. Experiencing a show from a wireline telephony point of view is indeed weird for someone who is enmeshed in industry from the wireless perspective. The news was much the same: IP Multimedia Subsystems will dramatically alter today’s access landscape.
The twist, it seems, is how wireless will fit into that landscape. At the 3GSM World Congress and CTIA wireless shows earlier this year, as well as every day at RCRNews.com, the mantra is the same: People want mobility. If there is a killer app, it’s mobility. As P. Diddy told the CTIA audience: “It’s all about cell phones … cell phones, cell phones, cell phones.”
At Supercomm, wireless access is just a piece of the puzzle and not necessarily more important than any of the other access points. People want unified services, Supercomm attendees said. They want the same service on their wired handsets, wireless devices, computers and TVs. It’s the quadruple play.
Wireless industry experts talk about the quadruple play too, but they emphasize mobility first. Industry stakeholders at Supercomm pointed to advanced telephony services, like call forwarding and call parking, which are available today on wired systems. When was the last time someone touted “call parking” from a wireless perspective? Wireless doesn’t talk much about advanced telephony services; instead people in wireless talk about gaming, multiplayer gaming, music services and watching TV. It’s a subtle difference, but a difference nevertheless.
The definition of wireless also seemed more malleable at the Supercomm show, depending on one’s spectrum position. BT, which shortly is expected to launch its BluePhone initiative, is planning on Wi-Fi and WiMAX being a big part of its wireless play. Initially, BluePhone service will enable a Bluetooth connection on a cell phone when the caller is in proximity of Bluetooth technology. Most of the times people are connected to a wireless access point, they are not moving, said Matt Bross, group chief technology officer at BT. For the U.K.-based BT, which sold its wireless biz and is an MVNO using Vodafone, wireless includes cellular telephony, Bluetooth, satellite, Wi-Fi, WiMAX and ultra-wideband technologies. A Wi-Fi connection using SIP technology is a broadband access point that enables carriers to offer richer features, Bross said.
That is a much different point of view than given by the CTO of Orange at 3GSM, who bluntly stated his company has too much money invested in GSM networks to toss aside its technology roadmap.
As one manufacturer explained: Philosophies are built on spectrum positions.
