John Linton
I've been using my shiny new Nokia N96 for just on three weeks now and over that time I've only made half a dozen 'cellular calls' with all the other calls being made using Exetel's VoIP over HSPA. In fact the only time I've made a cellular call was to test the quality difference between VoIP and Cellular to the same number with the person I was calling unaware of the difference. I will try the Exetel developed SMS over HSPA later this week (hopefully) as the release status of that service is now well into its beta testing and see if a complete mobilephonephobe like me can easily use it - from the 'demonstrations' I've been given it's a piece of cake to download the application and activate it.
I'm wondering what this will end up meaning in terms of what the major mobile carriers will do in the future. My mobile call costs are now a fraction of what they used to be and, if I used SMS which I don't, the same situation would apply to that service. My Australian mobile to wire line calls which on the previous three months bills averaged two and a half minutes now cost me 10 cents instead of 50 cents and my mobile to mobile calls which average one minute cost me 15 cents instead of 30 cents (I get preferential mobile rates of course - no minimum spend, no flag fall and per second charging).
I'm not sure how long it will take to get the 'final' version of SMS over HSPA fully operational but it isn't far away. Once that has been done we'll work on getting FAX over HSPA integrated in to the add on application suite for Exetel HSPA mobile phone users and then two other applications that we have some hopes for being useful and, temporarily, "exclusive" offerings.
Personally, I can't tell the difference in call quality but I can notice the slight delay - which I soon got used to and after three weeks have adjusted to allowing for it without a conscious effort. My usage has been confined to the Lower North Shore of Sydney so my personal experiences have no bearing on coverage - just on VoIP quality.When/if we persuade fring or some other third party to install servers in Sydney that slight delay will almost 'disappear'. If we can't get that to happen we will more seriously consider writing our own application- not the preferred way of going but if we have to do that then we will.
In terms of coverage, and specifically 'rural' coverage - Steve has just finished his 'field testing' of the HSPA service in 'country areas' of South Western West Australia and his results have been very positive and he details them on his blog here:
http://steve.blogs.exetel.com.au/
It's, of course very early days for our implementation of the HSPA services (and the recent media reports about the withdrawal of the Optus Retail and Optus Virgin HSPA services is concerning) and we have not yet sold 500 HSPA services in this 'testing' phase of how to effectively market the concept and actuality of HSPA. It is going to be inevitable that the service will become faster and the coverage will increase for Optus, and the other carriers, over the coming year and more people will own HSPA capable hand sets. So what will happen to 'conventional mobile calls when HSPA handsets become 'universal' and more and more VoIP providers and hand set manufacturers make it easy to use IP voice, data and SMS calls at 10 cents a call and 5 cents an SMS?
Allowing for the inherent 'Ludditism' of carriers generally over the years (they will do everything in their power to delay effective implementation of IP over mobile for as long as possible but that's now going to be only a matter of when not if) how will the carriers charge for mobile services when they are no longer used for 'conventional' calls and therefore the tariffs that they have used since the first mobile service was made available? I doubt that too many people understand how their mobile calls are charged to them at the moment but use the comfort of "caps" to allow them to ignore any likely inconveniences of thinking.
"Capped" plans will almost certainly be the answer with a mobile service being charged as a fixed cost based on some amount of data usage formula or formulae. All this strange and convoluted call calculation arithmetic will become usage included/excess based megabytes of data? Phones are already slowly replacing other devices (though perhaps it's more accurate to say that mobile phone hand sets are morphing in to other devices) with voice cals declining as a percentage of use and being replaced by email/messaging/photo transmission and of course video calling. VoIP and SMS over HSPA simply illustrate the massive cost shift in how call costs have already changed for the tiny minority of users but the "size of a man's hand" cloud (First Kings - 18.44 - amazing what you remember form attending chapel every day for 12 years) on the far horizon may well be in fact the earliest indication of the 'perfect storm' that will blow current mobile charging plans (and hence mobile hand set acquisition plans) out of the metaphorical water.
I'm sure every mobile carrier on the planet has developed their various different plans to make the transition for per minute tariffing to something else and I'm sure it will happen sooner rather than later but I'm glad I don't have to manage that particular transition. (especially if I'd planned to replace my now rapidly declining wire line revenues with far more profitable mobile minute revenues). Doubtless the carriers will cope - they own the infrastructures and therefore remain essential components of any future solutions. I wonder how the wire line resellers will cope (smaller companies who rely on wire line revenues such as Macquarie Telecom and PeopleTelecom and, come to think of it - AAPT and iPrimus)? I have enough issues to deal with without thinking about other people's possible concerns.
Is it really going to be an IP over HSPA future for mobile voice telephone, and related, services?