Fergie's Tech Blog

Why Mobile Carriers Avoid VoIP

Via Red Herring.

Klaus Czerwinski, a spokesperson for T-Mobile International, struggled to understand what a RedHerring.com reporter wanted to know. “I can hardly hear you because the connection is so bad,” he said. “I hear it is about Skype but no more.”

The question was not only about Skype, but the call was placed through Skype, the VoIP service now owned by eBay that helped pioneer the field of cheap, online telephony. To Skype’s defense, we could hear Mr. Czerwinski just fine—although, like many VoIP users, we’ve sometimes experienced fuzzy connections on other calls.

Still, Mr. Czerwinski made a good point, albeit inadvertently. The bad connection demonstrated one reason why T-Mobile has become the latest mobile carrier to ban Skype and other VoIP services from its professional data accounts: unreliable calling quality.

Another less-publicized reason is that VoIP could grow into a serious threat to both cellular revenue and network capacity.

posted by Fergie @ 6/03/2006 08:33:00 AM