* Why voice over wireless LANs may be more prevalent than you think
Last time, we highlighted some of the results from the 2005 Webtorials WLAN State-of-the-Market Report. In particular, we focused on the fact that while voice is an important component of WLAN deployment, it certainly does not appear to be the most important driver.
We believe, though, that more people might be using voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi ) than is often assumed.
The report showed a relatively low percentage of enterprises that plan to deploy handsets especially designed for use in a Wi-Fi environment. But more than three quarters of the respondents had already deployed wireless clients on laptop computers (or will within the next six months), and within a year the number will grow to more than 90%. And whether it’s an official deployment or not, every laptop with Wi-Fi access also has (potentially) VoIP access.
This type of access is clearly not reflected in the numbers for discrete devices and probably is not even reflected in the numbers for official deployment of soft phones. For instance, even though we usually do not consider ourselves to be users of “soft phones,” Steve just chatted with Larry about the newsletter that you are reading by calling Larry’s cell phone – using Skype’s outbound calling service (Skypeout) while connected via the IEEE 802.11 WLAN in the office. It worked. (By the way, this type of calling also works great when you’re in a hotel and already have high-speed Internet access.)
So while the future of discrete VoWiFi phones remains a bit murky, the use of VoIP in a wireless LAN environment may be yet another “stealth application” that is permeating your network whether you know it or not.
As a footnote, the Caller ID that was delivered to Larry’s phone was a VERY strange number. And this is obviously an application in which dialing 911 would not be appropriate. But stay tuned for next week’s newsletters, when we will refocus our attention on some new developments in the E-911 arena.
