Wireless voIP -- (Net2Phone)
Untethered: The Case for Enterprise Wireless VoIP
Written by Lynn Eberle
Voip Magazine
Monday, 19 September 2005
With businesses and consumers taking advantage of the cost savings and new features associated with making calls over a converged voice-data network, the logical next step is to take those advantages to the wireless world. The potential impact of wireless VoIP on the communications market is enormous. ABI Research has forecasted that dual mode cellular/voice over WiFi-enabled handsets will surpass 50 million by 2009, accounting for 7 percent of the overall handset market.
Wireless VoIP can have many advantages, including reduced cost for calls and higher-bandwidth data transfers versus a traditional cellular connection. More importantly, wireless VoIP can actually improve call quality, especially in residential areas or office towers where traditional mobile network coverage is spotty. Wireless technology, WiFi, and VoIP are a “natural” combination, since all are highly flexible, mobile, and economical. However, these are also technologies that are still in emerging growth stages—as are the enterprise communications models that mobile technologies will benefit.
On the enterprise front, mobile workforce and stay-at-home worker employment models are still evolving, despite the fact that both have received a lot of ink in national publications recently. Operational and human resource issues as well as technologies have to be implemented and “burned in” before the mobile workforce that everyone talks about develops at full speed.
The most effective corporate adaptations of mobile technology have been in very specific areas of application. Retail warehouses like Lowe’s, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot are off and running with wireless, WiFi, and VoIP. Enterprises with large field-based sales, service, and field engineer workforces (such as UPS) are also up and running with various combinations of these technologies. Law enforcement is adopting handheld wireless units and VoIP to improve the security of communications in the field—a security that proved elusive with radio-based communications. Hospitals and colleges are beginning to break through with a wireless-WiFi-VoIP communications infrastructure that takes advantage of a relatively closed campus environment that can capably support effective mobile communications. Even Starbucks is in the act with its WiFi “hotspot” coffee shops that make it convenient for patrons to do work over a cup of latte.
Nevertheless, there is still the majority of companies where wireless, WiFi, and VoIP are technologies currently being used in “isolation”—by executives who like the mobility and the convenience—or by salespersons who require the flexibility in the field. For these organizations, wireless technology is nothing more than a phone set request to IT. It is not an architectural direction with an overall application strategy.
The Case for Wireless VoIP
Wireless VoIP combines VoIP with wireless Internet networks that use communication standard 802.11b or later. With this communications protocol, laptops with VoIP soft phones, handheld computers, and other edge devices can be linked together for communications. These edge devices include two-way radios and walkie-talkies.
“The enterprise market requires mobility and wireless devices can provide this,” said David Span, senior vice president of Product Management and Marketing for Net2Phone, a provider of voice services over data networks. “Enterprises are more likely to have wireless access points, especially in a campus environment. In these environments, you’re not just restricted to home, or to trying to find a hotspot.”
The implementation of a voice virtual private network (VPN) serving multiple locations is an easy return on investment (ROI) for most organizations because the solution eliminates long distance charges and the cost of interoffice calling. “Calls can be made over the network,” said Span. “The hybrid PBX is where we will ultimately see even larger deployments of wireless and VoIP, because enterprises don’t want to invest in old technology.”
Timing will also increasingly become a factor. It has been five years, and organizations are beginning to consider upgrades to PBXs or key systems that they originally purchased for the Y2K crisis. These systems have now run the course of their life cycles. Enterprises do not want to lose all of their PBX investment so they solve the issue by transforming their PBXs into hybrid machines that can support both traditional telephony and VoIP. Many products have plug-in gateways that allow sites to make this transition to hybrid PBXs. By doing this, sites can avoid the purchases of expensive expansion cards when they add users.
“When you are talking about wireless and VoIP, it comes down to assessing what an enterprise needs,” said Span. “Along with our business partners, we show enterprises the advantages of a wireless-VoIP solution. We find that people in executive roles want a WiFi phone that does not replace a desktop phone, but that works in conjunction with it, since you can have the same phone number on all devices. Field sales, engineers, and home-based workers also use wireless, WiFi, and VoIP. Wireless VoIP solutions are less expensive than their cellular counterparts because calls can route through a corporate network. By using the network to terminate local and international calls, enterprises can lower their expenses.”
Where Wireless VoIP is Working
Although many enterprises are only casually using wireless VoIP at this time, there have been several significant areas of application where the technology is paying off strategically and operationally.
The Mobile Workforce — Salespersons and engineers require reliable field-based communications that can make them “seem” to be in the office when they are talking with clients and fellow employees. Corporate VPNs certainly facilitate this—and so do “hot spots” in frequently visited facilities like airports, hotels, and restaurants. Road warriors simply take their wireless handsets with them, and utilize the local WiFi hotspot.
A second significant constituency is the home-based workforce. This includes salespersons, engineers, and customer service representatives, and also contract and part-time workers. It is less expensive for many organizations when they can obtain labor in different geographical markets. Using home-based workers who can reside anywhere helps them to make this happen. The wireless VoIP combination allows companies to quickly set up home offices for home-based workers. Even for permanent employees, a lot of work is done from home, such as answering emails at the end of the day. “Overall, the lines between private and business life are blurring,” said Net2Phone’s Span. “Wireless networks work at home or anywhere. In all cases, it will appear to the caller that you are working at your desk.”
Retail Stores — Many of the large warehouse retail outlets have converted to WiFi LANs. By using wireless IP telephony throughout the stores, with “push” technology on walkie-talkies, communications between attendants working the floor are more effective and cost-efficient. Prices and inventories can be checked on the spot for consumers.
Since a warehouse environment has concrete floors, the end devices are hardened in the event that they are dropped. These hardened handsets bundle together all of the features of standard phones, including three-way calling, multi-line selection and call forwarding. The phones are dual mode (VoIP and regular telephone) for maximum flexibility.
Campus Environments — Wireless VoIP thrives in the campus environments of large companies and institutions. One example recently profiled in WiFi Planet is Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire). Dartmouth deployed a wireless network several years ago, and is adding voice. The college is now offering free soft phones to incoming freshmen that allow them to make and receive phone calls on a PC or a PDA. The free call service will be routed over the school’s converged voice and data network. Dartmouth will also offer WiFi phones that use voice recognition for hands-free calling. The college wants to reach the point where voice is simply just another application on its network. From there, the next step will be video.
Implementing Wireless VoIP
Wireless VoIP is evolutionary—and so are the paths of enterprises that are beginning to deploy it.
From the technology perspective, there are two ways to implement wireless and VoIP. The first is through a physical WiFi handset that works in conjunction with a VoIP device. The other solution is a soft phone dialer on a laptop that you can take with you. Both can make and take calls and emails. Both have call conferencing capability. Both are edge devices that can link into a VoIP PBX, and both can do “short code” dialing.
“The WiFi handset is a consumer product, but the line between a consumer and a SOHO (small business and home office) is very thin,” said David Span. “As an example, on the enterprise side, we are now financing a beta of our Voice Director product, which is an IP PBX solution that includes a WiFi handset. The overall solution is targeted at a multi-location enterprise with international locations, or with high volumes of interoffice calling. The value proposition for the enterprise is ‘on net’ calling regardless of the end device that the user is using. There are many scenarios in which this solution can work.”
Meanwhile, industry and regulatory forces are making it easier for enterprises to consider a wireless VoIP solution.
Handsets are certain to become less expensive over time—and more compelling for enterprises to adopt them. At the same time, the number of WiFi hot spots will continue to grow.
As a technology incentive, the FCC considers VoIP to be an unregulated technology. This means that VoIP-enabled calls, including those made with wireless equipment, are virtually free. This includes calls within the enterprise and its various locations—and to other organizations that are also VoIP-enabled.
Semiconductor companies are also continuing to roll out low-power WiFi chips for mobile phones and PDAs that support the 802.11 wireless networking standards. These processors consume less power, emit less heat, and provide greater throughput, which optimizes chips for power consumption and improves the performance of mobile phone battery life. Many chipset manufacturers are additionally providing toolsets that allow for painless chipset migrations on end devices.
Present Challenges to Wireless VoIP
Market forces will boost wireless VoIP use in the future, but wireless VoIP is not without its complications. Here are several issues that enterprise IT is wrestling with:
• Life Cycle Timing Wireless VoIP saves expenses, but there is also the cost of the initial deployment. Enterprises have to assess their existing infrastructures and telephony assets to determine when an entry point into new technologies like wireless VoIP makes sense. This entry point often depends on a “killer application” that drives adoption of the technology, such as the adoption of wireless VoIP for in-store communications as well as pricing and inventory checks in the retail sector.
• Other Barriers to Corporate Adoption Standards are still evolving for wireless VoIP. Evolving standards slow enterprise adoption because enterprises want assurances that the technologies they are adopting are fully interoperable with their existing telephony assets. There are also perceptions about quality of service, voice quality, and security that slow wireless VoIP adoption.
• Inconsistent Hotspots Hotels, airports, restaurants, and other public places are hosting hotspots to facilitate wireless communications by guests and visitors, but not all hotspots are consistent. Some hotspots (like Starbucks) are password-protected. Others do not have quality of service characteristics such as jitter control and bandwidth partitioning, which can cause data delays. These data delays are intensified when there is an overload of users on a particular network node, or in cases where there is extreme bandwidth demand. In cases where enterprises have campus hotspots and control over their own networks, much of this performance degradation can be eliminated by using one network for phone calls and another network for large data transfers and downloads.
Mixed Corporate VPNs More enterprises will begin to move forward in the definition of communications architectures that include wireless VoIP. Areas of major concern for enterprises will be network topology design, seamless security and communications handoffs, reliability and quality of service, the identification of workgroups that the technology is best suited for, and the definitions of workflows for telephone call handoffs and routings between wired and wireless devices. At the same time, organizations will be developing policies, procedures, standards, and performance metrics for wireless communications. These will include staffing decisions that revolve around the internal technical support of VoIP and the coordination of support with outside service providers and vendors. Enterprises with campus environments that include a headquarters and a number of proximate offsite facilities are best positioned to take advantage of wireless VoIP and WiFis over a Wireless VoIP will see aggressive technology expansion over the next 18 to 24 months in several key areas:
• WiFi Hotspots Public places like restaurants, hotels, and airports have recognized a competitive advantage in being able to offer WiFi hotspot services to visitors and customers. Hotspot services are especially well received by corporate travelers who desire full access to email, voicemail, call forwarding from their desktop telephones, and teleconferencing. Establishments sponsoring hotspots have created additional revenue channels from these add-on services.
• Improved Handsets Handset manufacturers are already building new generation phone sets. These phone sets will contain vastly improved battery life and voice quality. They will be able to work effortlessly over network architectures. We will also see the availability of a dual-mode cellular and WiFi phone on a single device.
• “Push to Talk” Applications Push to talk applications will continue their rollout in the retail, manufacturing, distribution, and transportation industries—and will likely expand from there. “These Push to Talk applications are becoming more widely used,” said Net2Phone’s David Span. “Push to Talk is for people who are on the same network. The technology works like a walkie-talkie, instead of calling someone’s phone. You can do short code dialing and talking and the phone is portable.”
• Integration of PBX Features Many enterprises start the wireless VoIP voyage by implementing it on a case-by-case basis, with no up-front plan for integration into the overall telephony scheme. In the future, more enterprises will take time to formally plan wireless VoIP into their network infrastructures. This integration planning will be driven by new business applications that require wireless mobility and VoIP. Enabling mobility to a broader number of employees facilitates virtual communications. “For example, if I get a business call on a cell phone, I cannot forward the call to someone else,” said David Span. “If I can connect with a WiFi phone, I can forward the call.”
• Standards Resolution New WiFi standards like 802.11e answer some of the concerns that WiFi vendors have when enterprises start using VoIP over WiFi. Unfortunately, the development of the standard is behind schedule. In the meantime, most vendors must continually fine-tune their systems to support technologies and standards that will make introducing voice to WiFi seamless. No one knows when the 802.11e standard will be finalized. Consequently, vendors are continuing to use their working versions of 802.11e so the deployment of the technology can continue to move forward. They do this by being mindful of who the big influencers in the industry are, and ensuring that their solutions interoperate with these platforms. Since there is always some risk to users when a standard is not finalized, there will be pressure over the next 18 to 24 months to obtain agreement on an industry standard
Full Speed Ahead
Wireless VoIP is in early planning and deployment stages in most enterprises. Best practices and industry standards are still evolving, and there is no one network architecture that fits every enterprise.
Yet, despite this uncertainty, there are major industries moving forward with wireless VoIP because they see the ROI and they see the competitive advantage.
Others are seeing that VoIP has emerged much quicker than the cellular phone. The technology is being accelerated as new product developments come out.
“As VoIP continues to grow, awareness of the voice quality that is possible is also growing,” said David Span. “This is a perception issue, and as an industry, we need to work on this. There is also an understanding with cell phone users, that cell phones do not yield the standard “five 9’s” of reliability that standard phones do. The question is, is WiFi more like a cell phone or more like a desktop phone when it comes to enterprise user expectations?”
Reliability expectations and other issues will begin to get answered in coming months. Meanwhile, industry analysts and providers advise enterprises to determine first what their overall strategies are.
A wireless deployment should be based on the needs of end users. However, if the enterprise is looking at integration as part of its overall VoIP solution—wireless technology should be part of that integration. |
