* Questions for mobile operators as industry delivers dual-mode devices
Some dual-mode devices with both Wi-Fi and cellular connections will simply let you connect to one type of network or the other. Others will automatically switch you to the fastest network within range, maintaining your session seamlessly as you roam across a network boundary.
This is where the mobile operators and service aggregators have a big opportunity (or should that be “responsibility,” particularly in the case of voice?) to make things work. For the dual-mode devices that support inter-network roaming while maintaining sessions, will carriers be willing to seamlessly hand off users from, say, a cellular network to a Wi-Fi hot spot if that hot spot isn’t their own (thereby handing off the associated revenue-generating minutes)?
By way of example, note the recent announcement that the HP iPAQ PocketPC h6320/6325 is now available for use on the Cingular Wireless GSM/GPRS network. Though it is not a Vo-Fi phone, the device also supports Wi-Fi connections.
The h6320/6325 will indeed automatically connect you to the fastest available network – be it cellular or a Wi-Fi hot spot – regardless of whose Wi-Fi network it is. But here’s the catch: The device isn’t available from Cingular, a Cingular spokesman confirmed. You buy the device through HP sales channels, and Cingular will be happy to collect on any airtime it happens to accrue from that sale. But will it sell you a service package with the HP device? Not today, anyway (despite what the company’s press release says). Meantime, you have to gather up multiple services (and monthly bills) from multiple providers.
This is likely to be a sticking point for all carriers, unless they adopt an ISP-esque “call it even” attitude about passing roaming users around, all have roaming agreements with one another, or all saturate all areas with their own network services.
If carriers can’t come to terms on settlement, perhaps the space will be ruled by service aggregators who already handle settlement and billing for such situations.
And, finally, will carriers be able to create service packages for enterprises that enable hand-offs to enterprise Wi-Fi networks while still making themselves financially happy?
These questions have been kicking around for a long time, but it’s getting close to the time they need answering. The back-end business and settlement issues regarding network roaming and integration are biggees and will likely be much more difficult to agree upon – let alone implement – than the technical challenges.
