The New York Times has sparked a lot of discussion about Wi-Fi telephony – the idea you can make a telephone call over a Wi-Fi network when using your mobile phone rather than burning up your mobile minutes. While Mathew Ingram and Om Malik have their doubts (and the mobile carriers will make Wi-Fi calls a technical challenge, if not an impossibility), it is an intriguing idea. In Toronto, you have to wonder the impact Toronto Hydro could make on the mobile market when its Wi-Fi network is rolled out in September? Can you imagine all those business folks in the downtown core using Skype over Toronto Hydro's network rather than Rogers, Telus or Bell? While telephony is a small part of the utility's plan, it's one area that gets Toronto Hydro Telecom CEO Dave Dobbin excited. He made a point of showing off the technology in action during a roundtable while at the Canadian Telecom Summit last month.
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I think WVoIP is just a matter of time. More and more dual-mode UMTS/WiFi phones are being released in the market, some with the ability to switch mid-call. Look for players in WiFi (and more importantly WIMAX) that aren't traditional mobile carriers to release integrate VoIP services as part of their standard “Internet service”. It's just the beginning of what I think will be 4G cellular communications.