Wi-Fi VoIP will not spell end for operators, BT says

The UK’s BT claims Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) over Wi-Fi will not fall outside established charging structures, while in the US it is being heralded as an alternative to 3G and the death knell for fixed line operators.

“People have thought VoIP would be disruptive and, if you ignored it completely and stayed with PSTN, it would be disruptive,” Steve Evans, CEO of the converged mobility portfolio at BT, told Electronics Weekly (UK).

“But BT is building a VoIP network and can afford to offer broadband connections and use VoIP and, instead of charging per minute, will charge for access to broadband on a monthly basis,” he says.

Nonetheless, some VoIP over Wi-Fi calls will be free of charge to the user. “A peer-to-peer call from someone using VoIP over Wi-Fi to someone else using VoIP over Wi-Fi will be completely free,” says Evans.

“But if the phone call is to someone who is not using VoIP over Wi-Fi, it would need BT, or some other carrier, to terminate the call, and that would mean there would be a break-out charge,” he adds.

Asked if he saw public access Wi-Fi, often provided free of charge by local authorities, as a potential threat to BT’s voice revenues, Evans replied: “Whoever offers a Wi-Fi service for free will pay someone a monthly line rental for broadband access. If the traffic kept mushrooming, with people sitting in the council library downloading video and eating up capacity, then the council would have to put in more broadband links.”

BT has 7,500 Wi-Fi hot-spots in the UK, which will be used as a complementary service to 3G telephony. Dual mode handsets, expected to become available either next year or in 2007, will be able to switch between GSM and Wi-Fi. Pure-play VoIP over Wi-Fi handsets are already on the market.