Cisco goes altruistic...

Cisco raises the compatibility concerns to European Commission, in the Skype-MS merger.

Imagine how difficult it would be if you were limited to calling people who only use the same carrier or if your phone could only call certain brands and not others. Cisco wants to avoid this future for video communications, and therefore today appealed the European Commission’s approval of the Microsoft/Skype merger to the General Court of the European Union. Messagenet, a European VoIP service provider, has joined us in the appeal.

This raises a couple of thoughts:
- compatibility is more crucial in the lower layers of the network. How about router vendors defining compatible OSSs?
- let's remember when Apple iPhone came out, Cisco took Apple to court because of the name. One could ask if that was for real.
This time there could be real concerns behind this. Cisco has been looking for video to be a key application. Of course, the more traffic, the better for their infrastructure sales
- at least I have not heard of their court-case partner Messagenet earlier, need to check their background...
- of course Cisco concerns as such are valid. MS may have a lot cooking here...

VoLTE-3G handover: is there a case?

Qualcomm and Ericsson are making hand-offs.

Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM) and Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) announced Thursday they have completed the first voice call handed off from a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, on voice-over LTE, to a WCDMA 3G network using Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC).

SRVCC is required by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for a seamless hand-off when a VoLTE call leaves the LTE network coverage area. Qualcomm completed its first -- and, it claims, the world's first -- hand-off on Dec. 23, on an Ericsson network using a handset with the Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 3G/LTE multimode processor on board.

There are a couple of reasons why I fail to see the value of this.
Firstly, this is more of the same, nothing new.
There will be no new services because of this concept.

Secondly, handover requirement of this type is something defined by Homo Telecomus (aka "BellHead").
I have not seen any major need for a WLAN/cellular handover, so why for this?

But future evolution COULD be more interesting.
Will RCS be implemented by Qualcomm?
I don't think RCS will be a success, but certainly a well-defined slow-moving standard could be beneficial as a chipmaker could jump into the game.
Let's also note that Qualcomm has been recruiting IMS know-how.

Let's see if this will increase demand for IMS.
Some sources say that CSFB is fast enough.
But, the fact that Qualcomm has made this happen, means there will be mobile endpoints to support VoLTE.

Also, where will the SIP stack reside:
- in the chipset (yes,if you ask Q...but will it be only for voice then?)
- in the OS (does MS have an interest here?)
- in the application layer (maybe OTT players wish that...)

In the original story, there was also an interesting comment:

My question is when might we see a "hand-off" from data billing to voice minutes billing? Will VoLTE conversations be billed as "voice" minutes even though they are data streams?

Guessing that the telcos aren't going to want to "hand off" the lucrative voice minutes, even when they are just another data stream. Long live the clarity of wireless billing.