Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but maintain some editorial control so as to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at:dmeyer@rcrwireless.com or tford@rcrwireless.com.
Interest in the potential of 4G and LTE networks continues to grow as mobile operators such as Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone and others announce deployments. The question is, what will the killer app be on this new network technology? What services will be driving LTE adoption and revenues? What capabilities will users be clamoring for? What is the best way to demonstrate the value of LTE? And what will operators and service providers need to do in order to capitalize on the potential of their 4G and LTE investments?
Video calling is a good example of a service that can help take full advantage of the capabilities of these new network technologies. According to many out there, there are a number of reasons why mobile video calling services have so far failed to achieve widespread popularity. These include doubts over video call quality, interoperability between devices and questions about demand.
The last reason is clearly no longer true. Social media such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have demonstrated — most recently during the unrest in the Middle East — that not only is a picture worth a thousand words, but a live video from the scene can have a significant impact on world events. Recent studies show that consumer demand for rich communications applications such as video calling/chat, video messaging, and real-time sharing of video content over social networks, portals and blogs is growing rapidly. According to a recent report from Cisco, two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2015, with mobile video traffic more than doubling every year between 2010 and 2015. Skype reported that more than 40% of its Skype-to-Skype calls included video, and that was before the launch of their mobile video calling application. The recent acquisition of Skype by Microsoft only serves to further legitimize the growing demand for video communications.
The devices are ready for video communications as well. Manufacturers know that a smart mobile device without a video camera is considered pass
