Why should there be a difference between Mobile UC in Europe and the States? One reason is the fact that the US doesn’t have nationwide 3G, and you need 3G in order to see presence on the IP data channel and be able to make a cellular voice call at the same time. Europe does have good 3G coverage and the Old World has been at the forefront of mobile innovation and deployment — it's where digital cellular telephony started — so one would expect to find that mobile UC is a deliverable today.
That assumption is more or less correct, but despite the tangible and much-talked-about benefits, this application has only reached the early adopter stage. Why?
I've been writing about this subject for around five years, and it has long been clear that desktop UC had to come first and that you needed FMC in order to reach the next level. And for a long time, enterprises had desktop UC on hold because of uncertainty about the timeline and functionality of Microsoft’s solution. The number of name changes along the way — different versions of "Live Server," which were followed by the OCS designation — indicate that this solution has been a moving target. So where are we now?
Well, dual-mode phones are needed to enable voice call continuity when transitioning between cellular and Wi-Fi networks, the most important of which is the company’s premises/campus. Hot spots are a shared VoIP resource, so voice quality can and does fall off, therefore for business purposes you need a solution that can monitor call quality and handover to cellular when quality becomes impaired. And finally, desktop UC has to be in place and the mobile devices should be seen as regular extensions. The latter function can be realized using a circuit-switched PBX extension solution (like that of UK vendor OnRelay), or the mobile can register directly with the PBX over IP.
When everything is in place it's a wonderfully productive application — there’s a real Wow factor — but getting there represents a significant investment. Ross Brennan, CEO of Cicero Networks, said: "The beauty of wireless Internet access is that I can be connected to all my favorite IP-based services, including enterprise UC services, regardless of my physical location." Cicero is an Irish company that has developed a converged, multi-mode softphone that supports Fixed, VoIP and Cellular calls and media services on a single device. This UC client is available on Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile devices. The company also has an FMC solution that it markets to service providers.
For SMBs that have limited technical resources, the obvious alternative is to get Mobile UC as a service, but mobile network operators (MNOs) are way behind the curve. Moreover MNOs love voice mail and telephone tag: the more wasted calls you make, the more money they bank, so why should they support presence? And why should they support roaming presence, i.e., why should they enable this communications parameter for the subscribers of other MNOs? These are rhetorical questions.
SMBs: A HUGE NICHE MARKET
There are a lot of SMBs in Europe: they make up around 50% of the average gross national product. The informal definition of an SMB is different for Europe and the United States: in the US, an SMB maxes out at around 500 employees, while in Europe the figure is much lower.
Another key difference is the size of the geographic markets and the need, in Europe, to service them in many languages. If the SMB has less than, say, 25 employees, then Mobile UC isn’t going to make much of a difference in most cases--or so I thought until I started thinking about desktop applications like MSN. Purists may not see these as being UC solutions, but the key functionality is the same, i.e., presence, availability, IM, VoIP and even Video. MNOs now (finally) provide reasonably priced Internet access without restricting your access to their walled garden of services. Therefore, with the right client software on the mobile device you can reach IP-based services: Websites, e-mail, presence, etc.. Sure, the cost goes up when using a cellular data connection on a foreign network, but everything still works because the presence server and presence client see the cellular network as a dumb IP bearer.
A couple of phone calls established the technical feasibility of this concept and the most likely candidate would be a MVNO (mobile virtual network operator). The service could be offered to consumers as well as SMBs. Watch this space.
ROAMING ISSUES
The GSM standard and roaming agreements between network operators created a global, intelligent network that we take for granted. It also resulted in a huge market for communications devices and services, so one would expect there to be a similar Mobile UC development. It’s on the radar screen: RCS (Rich Communication Suite) was started by the big European vendors and operators, and it went on to become a worldwide initiative within the GSMA. The focus is on the use of IMS for providing mobile phone communication services. The idea is to enable communication such as instant messaging, video sharing and buddy lists and to make them available on any type of devices that uses open communication between devices and networks. However, this initiative targets consumers.
Right now, roaming is enabled because UC is implemented over IP and therefore Mobile UC services should be accessible from any IP-based access network. That’s not to say that there won’t be problems in gaining remote access due to network policies and configurations. What will probably take years to develop is interconnect between different service providers for presence and instant messaging (so-called "federated" presence).
