Summary
The FCC is reviewing agreements between smart phone manufacturers and service providers to see if they are stifling competition. The service providers generally restrict VoIP capability from cell phones. Why and where will it finally end?
Analysis
Unless you are buying your cellular service on a prepaid model (where you pay for a certain number of minutes up front) or you rarely use your cell phone, you probably have an 'unlimited minutes' plan. You may also be paying for Internet access.
If ATT, Verizon or other cellular providers allowed VoIP services on their devices, you would not need the unlimited plan since you would just be using your Internet access for phone calls.
The real issue here is that the concept of a 'minute' of conversation just will not die in the minds of communication providers. Most of your conversations on your cell phone travel over IP networks anyway. It's pretty easy to calculate the upload/download data requirements for an average VoIP conversation. Change the calling plans for tiers of data usage that reflect these VoIP calculations and you no longer need minutes in the calculation.
For some reason the service providers still think that verbal communications need to be metered in minutes instead of data volume like any other IP usage. They reference the issue of delivering Quality of Service (QOS) for you and your talking experience.
With the right bandwidth management tools in place in the networks, the service providers could deliver the quality of service and maintain effective throttles on usage from cellular devices based on tiers of Internet access.
It will come. But first the 'minute' must die.
David Croslin consults with leading institutions through GLG
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
