Voice may be the single most important direction for the enterprise WLAN in 2011. But I'm concerned that it won't catch on until the carriers do.
I had the privilege of Chairing the Wi-Fi panel at last week’s Interop New York conference, which was primarily an energetic discussion of key standards and technology directions and a to-the-point debate of WLAN system architecture issues, particularly with respect to the control plane and whether it should be distributed or centralized. I always like to end these sessions with a question to the panel asking them to forecast the future – in this case, their individual views as to what would be the single most important direction for the enterprise WLAN over the next three years. Three of the six participants, myself included, suggested that voice over IP over Wi-Fi (VoFi) would be that key opportunity. And it’s easy to see why.
First of all, the panel consisted of representatives from five major enterprise-class vendors, including Xirrus, Cisco, Bluesocket, Aerohive, and Meraki (in order of their seating on the stage). These guys have their finger on the pulse of the industry, and success in a highly-competitive market depends upon keeping it there. And while not everyone agreed that voice was a key direction, all of these vendors have at least some capabilities supporting voice today. I view the most important voice technology direction as the support of what many still call fixed/mobile convergence (FMC), but which I refer to as mobile/mobile convergence, the bidirectional handing off of calls between cellular and Wi-Fi (instead of cellular and landlines, which is indeed fixed). The required technologies exist, and, as we saw with last week’s acquisition of convergence leader Agito Networks by unified communications leader ShoreTel, this space could be heating up. There’s every reason that enterprise should have VoFi in their planning – with the RJ-45/8P8C of little use in offices and cubicles today, can the RJ-11 be far behind?
The only damper I can see here, though, is a big one. Keep in mind that the cellular carriers control the handset market. Keep in mind that everyone is going to be carrying a cellular handset of some form, most likely an OS-based smartphone in a corporate context. And keep in mind that the carriers aren’t yet terribly excited about supporting enterprise in-building voice through a mechanism other than a distributed antenna system or similar vehicle – terminating a call on someone else’s network isn’t high on the list of priorities at the carriers today. In other words, don’t expect the carriers to hand off to an enterprise Wi-Fi system just because such is a logical, easy-to-implement approach to addressing a key enterprise communications requirement. And, if the carriers don’t get excited here, will VoFi in the general, horizontal case really matter? Will users really want to carry a separate VoFi-only handset?
Well, yes, in some cases they will. While at Interop New York, I saw a demo of Polycom’s terrific new Spectralink 8400 Series, a ruggedized cordless phone aimed at vertical markets like healthcare, retail, transportation, and logistics. In the right applications, such makes real sense and is even the preferred approach. But for most people, one handset should do it – indoors and out, and, for that matter, at work or at play – again why I believe that mobile policy management is also so important.
While enterprises can implement convergence strategies all by themselves, I think it will take the carriers getting excited about the possibilities here to really crack this opportunity open. And they should be such – convergence is a great way to lock in customers – I mean, meet their needs – at the lowest possible cost and with a degree of convenience that can’t be beat.
