John Linton When Exetel first began to look for an HSPA service we always considered that VoIP would be an essential 'data service' just as it is with wire line broad band. I would have thought that there would be NO person on the face of the planet who wouldn't think exactly the same. VoIP became an important usage of a data network over two years ago and today more than half (and continuing to grow) customers signing up for an Exetel broad band service also sign up for an Exetel VoIP service. Clearly some people signing up for an Exetel broad band service already have a VoIP service with another provider making the 'total' vip users muchcloser to 75%.
Exetel, like many commercial companies and an increasing number of government departments, only uses VoIP in its offices and from its directors homes and, more recently, from many of its directors and employees mobile telephones. With over 50% of new Exetel customers also choosing to use VoIP it would appear to me to be self evident that most Australians (I don't think Exetel users are any different to other ISP's users) now use VoIP as their standard telephone 'technology'.
So I was amazed to receive an email from an Exetel 'associate' that pointed out to me that Optus had recently changed its mobile SFOA to include the following:
5.14 Voice over Internet Protocol or VOIP service calls
We will charge you for calls made using the service on our 3G network to make voice calls over the Internet or any other Internet Protocol (IP) based network, including proprietary peer-to-peer internet telephony networks.
Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services (other than PTT) will be charged at 1.5c per kilobyte of usage, capped at $9.90 per month until you reach 2 megabytes of usage in that month, after which you will be charged at 0.3c per kilobyte of usage for the remainder of that month.
Of course, Optus can change the conditions under which it supplies its mobile services to meet its own requirements and doubtless there are clauses in its SFOA that allow those changes to be made at any time. I also understand that the convoluted, and incredibly obfuscatory methods of 'plan setting' used by all mobile companies have reached a level of such obscure complexity that 'changes' in technology may take time to penetrate the thinking of the 'marketing personnel' responsible for thinking up ever more complex ways of 'hiding the truth' from prospective buyers.
However - it seems almost unbelievable to me that such a main stream world wide technology change (from POTS to VoIP) that has been happening for over two years would, apparently, come as a surprise to a major mobile carrier. I had been aware from a visit to the UK over 18 months ago that EU mobile carriers had tried to slow down the use of VoIP over their services by 'crippling' the mobile handset hardware they were re-selling when the first data over mobile handsets were used but both by subsequent law and the technical ingenuity of end users those attempts were quickly rendered inoperative.
I, of course, understand that the 'capped' and 'timeless' mobile call plans offered by mobile carriers are based on very high mobile call charges and assumptions on call usage based on previous call patterns. I can also understand that some 'marketing people' didn't foresee that VoIP would be used on their mobile services when they added data components to 'capped' and 'timeless' plans. Careless of the marketing people but such situations happen from time to time as things change - no big deal - use new modeling assumptions moving forward.
There is VERY LITTLE DOUBT (in my mind at least) that VoIP will be used as extensively on HSPA by end users as it will be on wire line broad band services and I can't begin to understand that any mobile carrier's "plan constructors" wouldn't know this. They MUST have known this when you give it a moments thought. What appears to have surprised them (based on the change to the SFOA - and the same changes were made to the conditions for the 'timeless' plans) was that people buying data plans (or including data plans) for mobile hand sets would also use VoIP.
Why this should have come as a surprise, again, is beyond my comprehension. In Optus case, as one minor example, we made it very clear that we believed that VoIP over HSPA handsets would be very appealing to the sort of corporate customers we had in mind to market to. We also made the point that one MAJOR HSPA advantage was that it was a "naked" broad band solution and that "naked" ADSL2 was increasingly out selling ADSL2 that needed a phone line by 2:1 at the moment and continuing to increase.
I guess all that means is that Exetel is such a tiny customer of Optus that our stated intentions over six - twelve months never got to the 'ears' (or perhaps 'eyes') of anyone in Optus who was interested in such views and then checked out what was happening to VoIP over HSPA around the world. Or, perhaps, they figured they could control the mobile hand set manufactures to cripple any HSPA hand set's abilities to use VoIP.
I don't know how this will 'play out' in terms of either Optus or the other Australian mobile carriers 'adapting' their ts and cs but one thing I would be fairly sure about is that VoIP will be used over HSPA by almost every HSPA user by the end of this calendar year if not sooner than that.
I must re-check the terms of my HSPA data supply contract.