TeliaSonera is planning to take money for non-operator VoIP.
This would create a clear risk to innovative companies developing Internet apps.
This taken from TeliaSonera quarterly report on their plans to charge extra for Skype and other VoIP apps.
This raises some further questions and concerns.
1. Would charging extra for non-operator VoIP providers be in line with the European Commission view on Net neutrality?
2. What is more concerning is that VoIP is more often an add-on than the application itself.
Let's think of gaming enriched by voice. We are very familiar with that kind of experiences and can expect LTE make these even more common in the mobile environment.
How would charging for the VoIP path impact rich gaming applications?
How about voice embedded as part of a browsing session?
3. Now naturally, someone may say that a voice call is a voice call and (multimedia enriched) gaming is gaming.
Well, question is how do you do that?
Assuming there is capacity in the network (which we can assume will be the case), do you somehow try to delay the non-operator voice packets?
4. TeliaSonera Finland said they have no plans currently to implement charging for non-operator VoIP. (In Finnish unluckily)
But I guess this will happen someday. So what is a game developer to do?
I guess the operator will be offering some VoIP alternative (based on IMS or whatever) but the world is yet to see an operator-provided VoIP solution that would integrate with voice.
Secondly, I guess this may not happen in all markets.
But, assuming the other Finnish operators join the band wagon and start charging or blocking for the voice path of e.g. gaming app, what would that mean for gaming developers in Finland?
Not a very fruitful playground...
I admit I have been making assumptions in the above, but just trying to project what could be ahead.
Finland needs innovation from startups utilizing Internet technologies. And real-time Internet communications will be an increasingly important component of such apps.
What we do NOT need is an industry which has been reducing jobs and R&D investment suffocating such attempts.
