Thursday a Helsinki newspaper reported on an interview with Skype Founder Niklas Zennström where he mentioned Skype's frustrations with trying to develop a mobile phone VoIP client for Symbian devices (such as my Nokia N70 and N91). A few comments:

• My network of contacts include a team that has successfully built a VoIP client for the Symbian OS. They tell me to speculate that Skype is potentially experiencing problems with both processor speed and latency issues; acceptable quality VoIP on mobile also appears to require the speed of 3G networks to handle all the necessary processing associated with transmitting and receiving voice packets.
• It is known that attempts to use VoIP for "Push-to-Talk" services on 2G wireless mobile networks result in a noticeable and annoying 3 to 15 second latency as each party commences to talk. (These services are in high demand in service industries with dispatch-managed mobile work forces such as construction, landscaping and HVAC where wireless mobile emulates the operation of walkie-talkies.) Nextel's IDEN and, in Canada, Telus Mike services use a different wireless network infrastructure where latency is not an issue for "Push-to-Talk" services. As indicated in the referenced Wikipedia post, Sprint/Nextel and Telus would like to migrate these services to run over their CDMA service to eliminate the need to support a second network for their "Push-To-Talk" requirement. VoIP provides the potential for a solution but latency issues are holding them back.
• Mobile VoIP is one application where WiFi currently has a distinct advantage over GPRS as the wireless communications method; I have not observed any latency issue running Skype Mobile from my Dell Axim over WiFi. With my dual mode Nokia N91 Personal Entertainment Assistant, I find that I attempt to wait until WiFi is available before downloading new programs, services and videos as any data service usage can run up the bill pretty quickly (especially when you are a Rogers customer). T-Mobile would appear to have it right as a starting point for using wireless VoIP if the rumor mill is true about their forthcoming launch of a service that uses traditional wireless network "on-the-road" and seamlessly transitioning to WiFi when entering a WiFi-enabled zone, such as at home. Later in the same post reference above Ted Wallingford sums it up with:

Think about the global adoption of WiFi systems. Think about WiMax. Ask yourself-how fast has consumer wireless (not carrier-based cell wireless) become pervasive? Consumer-empowering technologies (of which WiFi is the principle example) have exploded, to the detriment of the big carriers. T-Mobile hotspots? PLEASE. Those will be gone sooner if not later. WiFi is cheap to provide and free to consume. Ask yourself-how long can a solution which dotes upon the druthers of the slow, cranky, old-hat cellular carriers survive in an environment of increasing global consolidation of those carriers?

Wireless VoIP, whether from Skype or anyone else, is going to be a case of "walk before you run" in terms of its introduction into mobile communications markets. And it needs to address a mix of technology and business model issues as well as useful Voice 2.0 applications to be broadly accepted.

P.S.: Late breaking posts that came out while I was writing this: Andy Abramson I: Is Jajah leading towards a Plaxo mobile offering? Andy Abramson II: On Cooperative Technology with the conclusion:

But for these new 2.0 ideas to advance, at the end of the day they have to be favorable to the insider forces in power that really run the world of mobile telephony around the globe. Those groups are far broader in reach than the VC's and have more to do with what happens when, and are really at the heart of the key issues we all are aware of like the net neutrality issue, as well as these new advanced services offers, because both transcend economics, politics, finance, legislation, regulation and technology.

Alec Saunders questions Andy.

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