Vonage VoIP chief executive Mark Lefar highlighted his company’s new mobile applications, which are not yet available to the consumer, but will eventually enable them to make free calls to other Vonage subscribers globally, as well as incorporate its own messaging platform, and calling plans.

Whilst the new product is highly similar to the offering from rival provider Skype, Mr. Lefar said that Vonage’s offering would be priced roughly 30% cheaper than that of its rival. Mr. Lefar also pointed out that Skype was not designed to be a full fledged alternative to mobile carriers, whilst the Voange app for mobile devices seamlessly taps into the smartphone contact list, and offers a much smoother interface.

“Skype is heavily invested in the Skype user name, while Vonage depends on tried-and-true phone numbers.” Mr. Lefar said.

Mr. Lefar added that MagicJack was the only iOS app that did not concern the VoIP provider.

“Our product testing would suggest that it’s nowhere close to same quality that we have, but for folks who are looking for a cheap alternative, but don’t care about 911 services, that are not as concerned about reliability, it’s certainly an alternative.”

According to Mr. Lefar, Vonage VoIP’s offering is a unique all in one communication tool.

Not all of Vonage’s major initiatives have panned out, with Lefar admitting the company spent way to much energy on its Facebook offering.

“There is a certain kind of distance that people want to keep from those individuals and their contacts, and Facebook friends are not the folks that folks want to call on a regular basis via voice. That’s why the bog-standard phone numbers are so important in the mobile apps — make Vonage behave like a regular cell phone and people will use it accordingly.”

Vonage’s new product should keep executives at all the major telcos up at night, since VoIP offerings tend to bypass their revenue model of airtime minutes, replacing it instead with a small volume of data traffic.

“You could be taking over 1,000 minutes a month over VoIP and still be using only a couple of megabytes.So the telecoms don’t even get to replace lost airtime revenues with large 3G or 4G packages — users will get by with a less generous data plan.”

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Mr. Dunne made his comments following his company’s trial of a new VoIP based system which enables Android and iOS powered smartphones to make calls, emails and SMS’s to one another using Wi-FI.

The statement is just another voice that lends itself to a wider optimistic forecasts for the future of the technology, which many analysts expect will produce new evolution within the communications technology industry, as it increasingly becomes a long term feature of the telecom market.

One analysts recently said that there was little doubt over whether VoIP based services would have major impact on the market, though the full extent is yet to be determined.

In 2011 the US VoIP solutions industry grew by a staggering 65 per cent compared to the previous year, which has prompted many experts in the telecoms industry to urge companies in the UK to take full advantage of the fledgling industry whilst market share is still up for grabs.

The UK telecoms business has an optimistic future ahead of it, with many hardware manufacturers such as Cisco seeking to broaden their product range as they seek to tap into the huge potential of the SME sector.

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The second phone could be any telephone including a business phone, with Extensions being designed to accommodate many customers using their mobile phone devices as their second phone. With this in mind Vonage has said that it will quickly introduce iPhone and Android applications.

Vonage describes Extensions as “breaking beyond the four walls of the home” which will make its VoIP service independent of the home telephone, with the company stressing the convenience of Extensions and the fact that users of Vonage World service can make calls to over 60 countries from their mobile device much cheaper than the cost of making the same call using their wireless carrier.

“This new service dramatically increases the value of Vonage’s core offering, providing customers with more flexibility and savings when making international calls,” said CEO Marc Lefar, in a statement.

“We have observed a trend prior to launching Extensions that led us to believe our customers would embrace this,” Tempora continued. “From data we have, we know that more than 50 percent of international calls in the U.S. are made from a mobile phone, so it made sense that our customers would want to do this.”

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The growth in the industry which is dominated by players such as Vonage VoIP will be driven primarily by Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking, and hosted VoIP services.

The report suggests that SIP trunking revenues are expected to grow at a whopping 52 per cent CAGR from now until 2015. The report also suggests that the number of residential subscribers is expected to reach 262 million globally by the year 2015, up from the current 179 million subscribers currently.

The three leasing players in the global residential VoIP business include NTT, France Telecom and Comcast, all of whom are existing fixed line or mobile telephony incumbents and have embraced a new business model which incorporates VoIP services as part of their future growth strategy.

“We’ve increased our short- and long-term forecasts for the voice over IP services market, as adoption in the residential, SOHO, and business segments continues unabated,” Infonetics Research said in its statement.

Whilst the VoIP services segment dominates numerically, the majority of revenue growth comes from the business segment.

“Following a healthy 2010, the overall VoIP services market is on track to grow another 17 percent in 2011,” Infonetics added.

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Beyond the free calls, the Time to Call application will let users make 15 minute calls around the world at a small fraction of the cost of the same call were it made through a traditional mobile carrier, again with easy payment using the iTunes platform.

The Vonage VoIP Time to Call App does not require a continuous commitment, and using the service to make calls is both easy and quick. All you need to do is download the application, then simply choose which country you prefer to call, hit the buy button and enter you credentials on iTunes. You can then make the call either from your address book, or by punching the number in by direct dial.

A fifteen minute call to over 100 countries ranges from between $0.99 to $1.99. The cost of making a call to mobiles and landlines are exactly the same, and you do not have to subscribe to the Vonage home phone service to be able to use the app.

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Analysts Mason’s say that nearly 20 per cent of all smartphone users in the developed markets have downloaded a mobile VoIP application, and of those, 4 per cent are active users of the service.

Consumers can use applications from Vonage VoIP or Skype to make either free or inexpensive calls using WiFi or 3G, which poses a significant threat to the revenue stream of mobile operators, though most have departed from strategies designed to block these applications, and have instead chosen to embrace it.

“We have had a Skype mobile app on many of our smartphones for the past 18 months or so,” a spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless in America said.

She did not comment on the iPad Skype app specifically, but noted that “tablets are more and more popular with customers, for many different reasons, including the wide range of apps you can use on them.”

3UK has embraced the adoption of Skype on its mobile devices for many years, saying that it believes that the ability to make VoIP calls from its devices has helped the operator both attract and retain customers.

“People who use Skype the longest stay with 3,” a spokesman said. He declined to comment on the impact on revenues.

However, analysts warn that operators will need to be vigilant to avoid revenue cannibalization.

“Clearly, there is a risk that subscribers will use services provided by other companies and that some spend will migrate from operators,” said Tom Rebbeck, research director for Analysys Mason.

“However, we don’t want to exaggerate the risk,” he added. “Operators will still generate revenues from providing network access.”

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Companies such as Vonage, Skype and Cisco have all helped make this technology more reliable and much more viable for both businesses and consumers.

As mobile applications increasingly get integrated with social networking apps, the potential for this technology to achieve critical mass, transforming fixed line telephone usage into one comprised almost exclusively of mobile. As this change occurs increasing investment in the technology will take place, and by 2015, it is anticipated that the market will be valued at roughly US$6 billion, creating a significant opportunity for suppliers of equipment as well as services.

For business this transformation means that mobile phones will eliminate the limitations of space and time for transacting business, increasing their effectiveness. This presents a challenge to mobile telephony incumbents however, who must figure out how to embrace and montetise the technology before losing traffic to new entrants such as Vonage VoIP and Skype.

Skype for example already has 600 million users and it continuously expanding, recently it acquired Qik which enable iPhone and Blackberry device users to conduct two way video calls, record and share the video across multiple platforms. Skype itself is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft, giving it significant financial muscle.
Mobile VoIP is simply a method of making calls using your mobile phone and routing them over the internet rather than the network of an operator. The main reason why the technology has boomed is there are significant cost savings to be had. You can use the technology wherever there is an internet connection, either over a Wi-Fi network or through 3 and 4G.

Business can use their current wireless IP infrastructure to provide voice services across their corporate WLAN (wireless local area network). Traditional mobile phones have broad coverage which cannot be said for mobile VoIP, which is its primary limitation. Users will necessary have to be located at an access point.

Traditional Local Area Networks make use of cables for IP phones to send and receive data. With a WLAN however, RF capability enables users to access core business applications in real time. That is to say when a mobile VoIP phone powers one, it seeks out an access point from where it logs onto the network. As a user moves between locations, the mobile VoIP phone moves between access points as it moves out of range of one, and into the range of another.

The data is transmitted to a server where it is processed and routed, with the Access point becoming all important since it provides the link into the network. Some WLAN’s have access points that are connected to an Ethernet switch by cable. The switch provides access to gateways and the server to support wireless IP telephony. Other networks make use of wired to support wireless, with the wired component consisting of routers, switches, bridges all enabling wireless capability.

According to the report from In-Stat by 2014 the largest driver of VoIP revenues will be Europe, the Middle East and Africa, which should account for 39 per cent, Asia Pacific follows after accounting for 32 per cent, and North America brings up the rear accounting for 21 per cent.

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The trend has meant that telecom’s companies are cashing in on the mobile bonanza, particularly when the report also suggests that the younger generation, aged between 25 to 29, abandoning fixed line in ever greater numbers.

This shift into mobile is no great surprise and has been taking place for well over a decade. It does mean bad news for companies who provide only landline services, but most telcos around the world expanded into mobile services as well. So many will indeed profit from the trend.

The report also suggests that whilst consumers are moving away from fixed line telecom, they are also demanding services beyond voice, and the mobile telcos are cashing in. revenue from data and texting has jumped.

Landlines disappearing has also meant that phone books are also increasingly becoming extinct, and it is unlikely that mobile numbers will be used instead. The trend may also result in cable companies increasingly shifting their focus to wireless and broadband as well.

The other great trend is the shift to VoIP telecom through services such as Vonage VoIP.

All these developments means residents of rural areas could face problems in the future, since it is difficult to find internet or mobile services in remote locations.

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What most people are unaware of however with self installed services such as Vonage VoIP, if you also have an alarm system, that may lose its connection to the telephone service, rendering it unable to send a signal to the central station.

Even professionally managed digital telephone services result in the alarm system becoming unreliable, so to ensure that signals do indeed get sent by the alarm system, security companies are now installing wireless mobile communicators for their customers, which ensure even when a phone line is cut, communications still continue.

If you have recently switched your phone service you should call your security company an ensure they are aware, and offer advice on any precautionary steps you may need to take.

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The company in actual fact applied for the patent in 2009 well before its recent announcement that it would acquire Skype, thus it is highly unlikely that two years ago it was preparing for just such an acquisition.

Microsoft has named the patent “Legal Intercept” which enables an eavesdropper to covertly record calls made over VoIP networks. The company has rationalized the development of the technology as a method to comply with requests from the government to enable them to undertake surveillance and wire tapping.

“Sometimes, a government or one of its agencies may need to monitor communications between telephone users,” the patent reads.

“Traditional techniques for silently recording telephone communication may not work correctly with VoIP and other network-based communication technology,” it reads. “For example, VoIP may include audio messages transmitted via gaming systems, instant messaging protocols that transmit audio, Skype and Skype-like applications, meeting software, video conferencing software, and the like.”

If Microsoft is granted the patent, it will enable Skype to placate governments who are resisting allowing the service to operate in their countries without the ability to tap or monitor phone calls.

Last year India threatened to ban Skype, Google and BlackBerry for failing to comply with its stringent security laws since the country faces an excessive threat from terrorism following the aftermath of Mumbai and other terror attacks.

In 2008 Skype itself was the subject of intense criticism, when it emerged that it had monitored calls on behalf of the Chinese government.

Academics say that whilst the technology is law enforcement friendly, it also means it is dictator friendly, and could have implications on popular revolts such as those that are taking place in the Middle East.

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