Banning Mobile VoIP

Consider this: you know that you are going to die eventually. Is this a reason to kill yourself now? I would hope you answered 'no'. Yet when the subject is the future inevitability of VoIP on mobile phones there is surprise that the carriers don't cave in now and allow it. They have good business reasons to delay the inevitable; it's to their financial benefit today and possibly for some years into the future.

Microsoft is the latest smart phone OS provider to ban VoIP apps from their app store. I doubt that Microsoft particularly cares except they would need to bend to this carrier demand if they hope to get phones with their software out into the market. They are not the first to find that they must do this. Android is perhaps the only OS that is a more open to VoIP today since apps can be downloaded from third-party markets, beyond the censorship of the carriers.

The carriers quite naturally want to maintain the revenue from voice minutes, especially roaming and long distance charges, for as long as possible. They also want to set the timetable for any shift of voice minutes to VoIP, hopefully once they have a business strategy that works in their favour. This may be impossible, but they will try. No one should be surprised that the carriers would exercise their ability to impede VoIP for the present.

I covered mobile phone VoIP earlier with respect to the interests of the carriers, and also discussed some of the technical reasons why it is still problematical. Bandwidth is rapidly becoming a non-problem, but battery life, still a significant issue for smart phones, is a particular problem for VoIP: to receive incoming calls requires the power-hogging application-hosting processor to be continuously running. There are feasible solutions, just not ones that are available now. Even if they were, the carriers would try to keep them out of phones.

Mobile VoIP is coming, but will require patience.