Higher Mobility Lower Costs

VoWiFi: Higher Mobility, Lower Costs

As technology advances and it becomes more affordable, it also tends to become mainstream. The same holds true for wireless devices. More and more people are choosing to do away with all the cords and cables and enjoy the freedom given by wireless computers and telephones.

It is not just a fashion, though, or simply the attractiveness of something new, or even the desire for comfort. In today’s world, businesses require increasingly more mobility for their employees, and being able to take your office with you while travelling is often quite necessary. It facilitates enormously the contact between customers and agents, as well as between any employees and the team they are part of.

Cellular telephony enabled people to stay reachable while travelling. But now, it seems that a novel technology is planning to change everything we know about telephone services. The dynamic newcomers are VoIP and the even newer VoWiFi. Let’s have a look at each of them.

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is also referred to as Internet telephony. It works in a completely different way than the public switched telephone network, by encoding voice into data packets that are sent over the Internet.

WiFi stands for Wireless Fidelity and it is a term used when referring to wireless computer networks. Instead of using cables, these computers communicate with each other through radio signals. A wireless network can be entered through a so-called wireless access point or hotspot. If your laptop has a wireless network interface card, you’ll be able to go online every time you are in the area of such a hotspot. Leaving aside the complications this causes in terms of data security, such freedom of movement can be a tremendous advantage.

VoIP is now starting to incorporate wireless technology as well. The result are the new VoWiFi phones – a kind of cell phones of the Internet. They use the VoIP technology and connect to any wireless access point to transmit the voice packets. In other words, wherever you are, if there’s a hotspot available, you’ll be able to talk. But VoWiFi phones are still very new on the market and hotspots are not as numerous and wide as we would like them to be – two reasons why VoWiFi will have to wait a while before it becomes attractive for a large number of customers.

However, it would be a shame not to use the benefits of VoWiFi until the geographic coverage of hotspots ensure uninterrupted connectivity and security issues are solved. True, we have cellular telephony – but the costs of calling are incomparably lower with VoWiFi, firstly because VoIP is inexpensive to begin with, and second, because there are no roaming charges involved with the use of wireless networks. The solution, for now, seems to be the hybrid phone, combining cellular technology with VoWiFi and automatically selecting the most convenient choice. There are currently several VoWiFi telephones on the market. They’re a bit expensive, but you’ll be saving a lot by not having to pay roaming charges.

The fact that major telephone service providers, who have so long worked only on PSTN, are currently directing their attention towards VoIP and VoWiFi gives us reasons to believe that this technology has a bright future ahead. We can expect more wireless hotspots and better network security, so that people’s need for mobility and low costs can soon be met.

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