iOS6 to combine identities, Apple to challenge GSMA...?

Here is something interesting from Apple.
The story does not talk of VoIP, but IM and video is included, also over cellular radio.

Key part:
Apple just announced a new feature that'll make using iMessage and Facetime a lot more useful — you can choose to unify your Apple ID email address and your iPhone phone number, so that messages and Facetime calls are more reliably delivered across iOS devices and your Mac. Now, if someone calls your phone number for Facetime, you'll be able to answer on your Mac or iPad. The same goes for Messages — if you get an iMessage on your phone, it'll be delivered to your Mac and other iOS devices, even if the sender sent the message to your cell phone number and not your Apple ID email. While it's too soon to tell if this will fix the issues we had with Messages on Mountain Lion, it sounds like this change could go a long way towards making sure that when someone sends you an iMessage or Facetime call, you get it across all your devices.

Let's see what this could mean:
- cellular becomes backup channel
- it is easy to see VoIP in the pipeline, the technology is there
- the result would be fullblown CoIP in Apple domain
- let's look at Google and MS. They have all the necessary capabilities...

So, the world could be quite different, a year from now...