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Can cellular operators cash in on the Skype phenomenon with wVoIP?

"Don't be afraid of VoIP - provide mobile ID of incoming callers!" - a way for cellular networks to reap profits from 'free' internet telephony, thinks Comfone

The company has launched wVoIP to preserve the investment of networks in their phone number base. The technology is essentially VoIP, but it tracks calls made on hotspots to PSTN or Wireless networks back to a SIM card.

Currently, there are no announced plans to put SIM cards in VoIP notebooks, for this service - but several manufacturers have suggested this, and Dell is already offering suitable PC laptops.

The idea is that cellular operators can offer a two-tier service for incoming VoIP calls. Using the outreach of a sister company to Comfone, WeRoam, the company says operators can track an incoming call by noting the subscriber ID connected to the SIM card in a dual-mode phone.

"What we then offer them is return traffic," said Thomas Lasser, marketing manager. "If you call back, you're initiating a call to a mobile handset, generating termination charges."

The company has also announced that it now has signed up nearly 80 networks to its "broker roaming" service. It now acts as paid middleman to all these carriers, handling the roaming charge arrangements that previously had to be set up, one to one, and managed by each carrier for all roaming partners.

The Key2roam community now includes T-Mobile in Germany, MobiNil Egypt, Hutchison 3G Australia, Infonet Venezuela, Orange Israel, Cable & Wireless West Indies, Vibo, Taiwan, Novgorod Russia "and many other important operators" said Lasser.

The effect is to commoditise the roaming business, and incidentally set up a situation where Comfone becomes the gate-keeper of a huge financial network, which could also leverage the wVoIP service in due course.

"It allows operators to increase operational margins, and free up valuable resources not possible with a spaghetti-style, bilateral approach to roaming," said Oscar Derrer, CEO.

The service is only two years old and, as it gets momentum, makes it possible for new operators to start up much more easily. Where it was originally necessary to set up a different contract with every other roaming phone network before you could start making money, it can now be done just by signing a single deal with Comfone.

The Swiss-based company expects to launch commercial VoIP services around June this year.

Tags: 3GSM, VoIP