10 mobile trends: Should you care?

3. Mobile VoIP

Mobile VoIP has been garnering more than its fair share of headlines with a flurry of announcements from BT about its Fusion service and from handset manufacturers on the latest dual-mode phones but actual real world deployments of such systems are few and far between.

Research shows one-fifth of companies are looking into FMC and, for most, it is money-saving rather than a productivity boon that interests them. For that reason - and that alone - the buzz over FMC is unlikely to subside soon.

According to Quocirca analyst Rob Bamford: "All those other things you can do at the moment [with mobile VoIP] are all well and good but I think the initial thinking that it's a cheap way to make calls is not necessarily true, of course. A VoIP infrastructure or a [mobile] infrastructure capable of handling voice over IP calls could require some significant investment. It's not all free of course, especially in a mobile context."

Ten mobile trends

1. FMC
2. Salesforce automation
3. VoIP
4. Payments
5. 3.5G - HSDPA
6. Location-based services
7. TV
8. Device management
9. M2M
10. Antivirus

Such costs can come in the form of making sure a wi-fi network is able to support the increased traffic, resulting from calls taking place over cellular networks, and ensuring in-building coverage (i.e. coverage inside buildings) is sufficient.

IP is undeniably a part of most larger organisations' telecoms plans so for some it could make sense to take the IP even further out of the network and even into users devices. However, telecoms upgrade cycles are traditionally longer than those of IT, which may hamstring CIOs in their quest for upgrades. For those in such a position, putting the squeeze on operators for cheaper bundles of minutes may be more cost-effective in the short term.

Nevertheless, the next couple of years are likely to see the advent of hosted solutions, as operators tap into SMEs that don't have the time or expertise to run a converged infrastructure. Should offerings be priced right, SMEs could boost the movement to adopt mobile VoIP.

Bamford concluded: "It's pretty early days with mobile VoIP but this is probably the year that companies that are doing something in this space will be doing something more significant."

RATING: 2.5/5 - you should be at least thinking about this now.