WebRTC: we're starting to see the "big guns" emerge into the real world. First up, Zendesk, Vonage & Siemens

While the internal WebRTC world has seen a lot of famous company names attending conferences, participating in standards bodies, issuing press releases, or selling tools, SDKs or enablers to each other, relatively few have actually put out "powered by WebRTC" products into the real world for users.

Obviously, Google and Mozilla have both launched browsers, but that doesn't really count as that's still an "enabler" rather than an end-user product or service. There's also a ton of plucky startups like Bistri, Solaborate, Uberconference, Twelephone and others that have entered niches like conferencing and social networks, but none have yet hit maturity or been seen as major disruptions to the status quo in their sectors.

Buy the Disruptive Analysis WebRTC strategy report & market forecasts - now including the Q2 June 2013 update

To my mind, there are now three "traditional" big players that have walked the walk, and put WebRTC into their mainstream products:

• Zendesk is a major player in SaaS-based customer support, enabling helplines or mail/IM interaction for big web companies and others. It has 30,000 customer companies and has facilitated support for over 200 million "customers' customers". It started to defaulting to WebRTC for voice calls a couple of months ago, on relevant browsers, while others still use Flash or other options. (It's worth noting that other startups such as Zingaya also have WebRTC-based B2C click-to-call buttons deployed for some large companies for support & CRM)
• Vonage created quite a stir at the WebRTC Expo in Atlanta last month. As one of the best-known VoIP players spanning home phonelines to mobile apps, it is the first of the big consumer communications brands to adopt the technology openly. It is also the first massmarket company to commercialise a non-browser, app-integrated variant of WebRTC, optimised for working on mobile devices. (Good interview with the CTO here). It's also pitching to provide white-label/partnered plaftorms for telcos. Outside the main scope of this blog post, but Vonage is apparently using the WebRTC Native Stack - the code mostly intended for browser suppliers - to build WebRTC into a non-browser app instead. It also claims several million users already, on both iOS and Android.
• Siemens Enterprise Communications is the first major enterprise UC player to throw its hat into the WebRTC ring with a (beta, pre-commercial) offering, called Project Ansible . At first sight, Ansible looks remarkably well-thought through, with social integration, fixed and mobile implementations, Hypervoice-type features ("Thought Trails") and, importantly, as much emphasis placed on design (courtesy of specialists frog) as engineering. The website discusses things like "joy of use" and "freemium models" - unusual for business comms tools from major vendors. Siemens has stolen a march on its big UC peers (albeit it with a beta) - despite Cisco being involved in WebRTC since Day 1, and an Avaya employee quite literally "writing the book". As yet, they haven't announced actual WebRTC products, though. Others like Microsoft are pursuing other strategies for now (Skype/Lync integration etc).

So what can we learn from this?

First, the "big guns" are now coming out of hiding (or at least, out of their labs). One is an outlier, two is a coincidence, but three is a trend. I'd expect many of the others in each of these categories' peer groups to start using WebRTC over the next 6-9 months.

Second, there are no telcos in this list. The closest we've seen to market-ready WebRTC offers from SPs are AT&T's API work, and Telefonica's OpenTok and Mantis tools/platforms for developers. However, we haven't yet seen an end-user telco WebRTC proposition, although Telefonica is "eating its own dogfood" with its use of the TokBox-powered Oscar videoconferencing application internally.

Third, a lot of real-world WebRTC use is going to be hidden. There may well be a bunch of companies - banks, healthcare providers and so forth - using WebRTC "under the hood" in their websites, perhaps using call-me buttons, or gateways from Thrupoint or Oracle or Genband or others, without trumpeting it to the wider market.

Fourth, although enterprise deployments are still in the vanguard for WebRTC, the emergence of Vonage's solution raises the possibility that consumer mobile apps will rapidly deliver millions of active users. It's not just Chrome and Firefox browsers that update easily or automatically - most mobile apps do as well. It only takes one major social network to adopt WebRTC - not even for "calling" but maybe something data-related or other video use-cases - and I'm going to be reworking my forecast model again. To my mind, Vonage has been the big light-switch for a lot of people - mobile WebRTC isn't necessarily going to be browser based, but embedded into apps.

Fifth, startups are going to have to either act fast or differentiate solidly. Incumbents in most WebRTC-centric applications aren't going to be taking years to procrastinate and respond to disruptors. This puts a premium on marketing, distribution and sales, especially where newcomers are pitching directly against established players - videoconferencing, I'm looking at you! (I'll reserve judgement on some of the telecom use-cases' ability to accelerate though: let's see what happens).

Overall, it's good to see well-known players like Zendesk, Vonage & Siemens adopting WebRTC. It gives gravitas to the market and gives something for a couple of naysayers to chew on. 

Let's see who's next: my money would be on the other UC vendors looking to spike Siemens' guns with brought-forward announcements, although we could conceivably see a VoIP/IM brand like Viber or Whatsapp surprise us as well.

If you're reading this and want more details about Disruptive Analysis' predictions for WebRTC, you should definitely buy the report - now available including the Q2 June 2013 update.

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Broadband, Internet, Voice, Telephony, Messaging etc: Words & semantic matter

I had two conversations about fax machines and security-alarms yesterday.

Very 1980s, you might think. Yet both cropped up in conversations about FTTH, IP networks and the future of communications. My two discussions were with colleagues and peers Benoit Felten and Martin Geddes.

The conversations highlighted the importance of a few words that we use in the telecoms industry without really thinking what they mean properly. "Phone lines", for example, are not just used to make phone calls. Obviously they are used for DSL too (more on broadband below), but also fax machines, alarm systems, point-of-sale terminals, elevator emergency phones and all sorts of other things.

Historically yes, phone calls have been the main use of narrowband phone lines. But as telephony revenues fall ever lower, and we start to look at IP replacements via fibre or perhaps wireless, a bunch of other issues start to become disproportionately important.

"Oh, we can run fax over IP if it's really needed". Yes, true - but what about fire alarms & the elevators? Even if those systems can be reworked over IP, what is the cost of switchover? How much does a "truck roll" for the safety certification guy from Otis cost?

So it's worth being careful about talking about switching off the "phone" network, as it's not just about phones.

Similarly, I've often drawn a distinction between "voice" and "telephony". Apart from a little bit of push-to-talk, and maybe conferencing, telcos only do the latter. They don't have "voice" revenues, they have "telephony" revenues. There's a broad and growing set of voice communications models and applications that are nothing to do with phone calls. However, few executives - or regulators or investors - have quite woken up to this yet. Given the likely downward trajectory of telephone revenues (including mobile calls) over the next few years, this is going to become suddenly important.

The ways we manage, record, bill, present, regulate, intercept non-telephony voice is currently off of most peoples' radar screens. Do we need 911 and lawful-interception for baby monitors, business "hoot'n'holler" intercoms, networked karaoke or in-game chat? Do we count baby gurgles and songs in minutes and report the stats? Will PRISM have to listen to the snores of someone under remote-diagnosis for sleep apnea?

Broadband vs Internet is another critical semantic distinction. Internet access is just a very specific - albeit special - application of broadband access networks. For consumers, broadband today often also has carrier VoIP and IPTV delivered alongside Internet access, and in future we may get various digital lifestyle services, remote metering and so forth delivered, which do not transit the public Internet. This has implications for both how we quantify economic costs and benefits, but also how rules such as Network Neutrality get applied. Sloppy use of the wrong terminology can lead to poor investment and regulatory decisions.

The Internet/Web distinction is well known but also widely overlooked.

"Messaging" is a fairly nebulous concept too, as I've discussed before.

Lastly, we have "mobile" which can refer to mobile networks (3G/4G cellular vs. WiFi), mobile devices (smartphones yes... but are tablets "mobile"?) or mobile users (moving about vs. nomadic vs. stationary). Whenever you see stats claiming "X% of web use / data traffic / Internet users is mobile", you can guarantee that there's no clear definition. Frequently, people will pick whichever definition gives them the largest number to try to make their point stronger. The argument that a WiFi-only tablet that never leaves the sofa - never mind leaving the house - contributes to "mobile web advertising" is somehow "mobile" is ridiculous.

Mobile vs. Wireless is another troublesome one, especially as the telecom industry has historically designed complex and expensive networks specifically to meet the needs of people "moving about", but then happily sold most of their services - and gained most of their revenues - from people who are wirelessly-connected but stationary. That was fine in the past, but is starting to be a questionable assumption as perfectly-good wireless networks start to become available for free as an "amenity" rather than a "service".

We've also got "application" which can means 100 different things depending on who you're speaking to. User vs. subscriber is good one too.

Overall, I think it is incumbent on all of us to become much less sloppy with our telecom semantics. In the past, the world was simpler and we could get away with saying "voice" when we meant "telephony". Lobbyists could conflate Internet and Broadband, twisting words to hide flawed arguments against Neutrality.

But now, the industry is facing laser-like challenges, as well as narrow and well-defined opportunities. Picking the wrong words, making flawed generalisations and comparisons, confusing subsets and supersets - all these will lead to poor decision-making and flawed analysis.

Think twice before you open your mouth....and correct other peoples' sloppiness and push them for definitions of what they mean.

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What I'm looking for at this week's WebRTC Conference & Expo in Atlanta

I'm now in Atlanta, catching up from jetlag and preparing for what I expect is going to be a landmark event for WebRTC - probably the year's largest conference and exhibition on the technology, with rumours of 600+ attendees and a sold-out roster of sponsors.

I'm speaking this afternoon at the Business workshop along with organiser Phil Edholm, and fellow analysts Chris Vitek and Brent Kelly. I'm also moderating four panels over the next few days, on topics like SIP/WebRTC coexistence, WebRTC "game-changers" & the impact on telco business models. I'll also be on the wrap-up panel on Thursday, "beyond the call". Add to that being a judge for 50 or so 10-minute demos, numerous client meetings, briefings and dinners, and I think by the end of the week I'll be saturated in the current status of the WebRTC marketplace.

I've got a number of questions to answer, that I'll be looking for input for both directly and indirectly. It's often telling to see what people don't say, who is/isn't present, and meta-themes emerging when comparing multiple presetations or panel responses that gives a real clue.

Some of the topics to watch:

• EDIT (forgot the obvious!) is WebRTC going to be driven more by adding Web-based access to existing types of RTC, or by adding RTC to the Web? eg Web-enabling RTC = browser front end to UC, IMS, contact centre; RTC-enabling Web = click-to-speak on a B2C site, or a million niche things like streaming sensor data, or adding karaoke to a music-download site
• At the moment, I think enterprise use-cases have a narrow real-world lead over both consumer web & telco applications of WebRTC. Will that be sustained?
• How far are we from seeing real, innovative applications of WebRTC actually in the world and being used? I don't mean just using it instead of a SIP softphone or as a cheaper call-centre agent desktop, but something really unexpected or headscratching
• Is the datachannel aspect of WebRTC really the hidden gem?
• How can I categorise and segment the WebRTC Gateway vendor space? Who's real and who's just playing Powerpoint-and-press-release? It's getting really competitive, and I suspect it'll end up as a few big players, plus niche focused specialists, plus a lot of "WebRTC-as-tickbox-feature". And some dead me-toos.
• How can I categorise the API/SDK/cloud bit of WebRTC vendor-land? I've lost count of the number I've encountered here - between 10-15 I think. Is it all about mobile? Is anyone doing anything *real* with WebRTC cloud platforms yet, or will it take developers a few more months to churn out the good stuff?
• Any news on the "missing"? Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Samsung, Amazon - please stand up! Bonus points for anyone doing a WebRTC mashup with face-recognition camera & LinkedIn profiles to spot any stealthy undercover representatives.
• Which telcos are lurking around? Who's willing to actually pipe up  and say something beyond the usual culprits like AT&T & Telefonica/Tokbox?
• Who's here from Asia? All the signs are that WebRTC is under lots of scrutiny in China, Japan, Korea & Singapore. But little news on exactly what's being done....
• Where is Google taking all this? What can be inferred from what's left unsaid?
• Ditto for Cisco, Ericsson, Oracle - do they have big strategic games afoot? Or are they following the NSN & ALU view that WebRTC is just another front-end for IMS/VoLTE/(RCS)
• How much of the WebRTC vendor market will Open Source eat?
• What are the appropriate WebRTC market metrics for me to forecast in the future?
• Are my forecasts for devices support & user base growth too aggressive, or will I need to upgrade them again as I'm actually conservative?
• Will there be any seriously big unexpected announcements?

Plus also a couple of other topics I'm keeping under wraps, either for clients or my own research into WebRTC.

Overall, it's going to be a gruelling week, but by the end of it I expect to have got a much better "world view" of where WebRTC is, and where it's likely to be be by the end of 2013 and beyond. Feel free to come and say hello and/or chat over coffee or beer - and apologies if I'm dashing around like a lunatic for my next session.

On that topic: if you buy a licence for my WebRTC report before July 1st, I'll throw in the Q2 update I published a couple of weeks ago. And if you stump for an enterprise licence or a subscription to the updates (contact me for details), and I'll also add a 1-hour conference call to update on my thoughts from this week's show.

Details / payment here or else contact me via information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

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WiFi - the coming indoor vs. outdoor divide

I've been speaking to assorted vendors recently about their plans for carrier WiFi, linked to the usual rhetoric about Hotspot 2.0, ANDSF, so-called "seamless" authentication and so forth.

I still contend that a lot of this is nonsense - the mobile operators are only one group in an increasingly complex ecosystem of stakeholders interested in WiFi. The end-users, venue-owners, tenants, fixed/cable ISPs, device vendors, OS suppliers, content players, app providers, employers, advertisers and local government all have "skin in the game" with helping users connect to WiFi. Mobile operators are not "special flowers" among that group - and certainly have no likelihood of enforcing their will about when and where users will connect; much less charge them or subject them to onerous policy controls.

But I'm starting to spot a subtle distinction: indoor vs. outdoor use.

In an indoor environment,  users are used to WiFi being provided by their hotel, cafe, airport, home, office or other sponsor. Increasingly it is free, but perhaps with a small "hoop" to jump through such as watching an advert, or asking a barista for a code. Usually, the access point and backhaul are controlled by the venue or tenant, although a 3rd-party like a wireless ISP might be contracted to provide these. There will be an expectation that any person in that venue - irrespective of which cellular operator(s) they might use - will have access to WiFi, especially as many devices like PCs and tablets are WiFi-only anyway.

This is very different from outdoors.

Outdoors, people are properly "mobile", ie moving-about. They get access from only one provider - their cellular operator. Any other stakeholders like MVNO hosts, network-sharing consortia, site owners and so forth are hidden behind the "Operator X" logo displayed on the phone's screen. People accept and except that different operators will have different coverage, and that they do indeed expect "seamless" handoff from cell to cell.

Outdoors, the HetNet vision makes more sense - macrocell, picocell, femtocell - and, yes, maybe WiFi - owned and operated by the telco, may be used to provide decent data connectivity, as well as telephony and SMS.

While a few cities now have outdoor WiFi provided by a local council or company, that remains rare. People don't have expectations about outdoor WiFi behaviour the same way they do inside a building. A smartphone's WiFi essentially becomes a single-stakeholder environment (or two including the user) in the street, or perhaps a few special locations like aircraft.

In summary;

Indoor WiFi = multi-stakeholder, too complex for the 3GPP/WBA/OMA/GSMA model of operator control and network integration. Limited relevance of ANDSF, carrier-driven Hotspot 2.0, SIM authentication. Largely a UX problem.

Outdoor WiFi = fewer stakeholders, more chance for direct integration & seamlessness. Although complexities where the user could access WiFi as well as 3G/4G metrocells & macrocells. Largely a RAN/policy problem.

The other meta-problem comes from how to know when to switch from carrier-WiFi mode to multi-stakeholder WiFi mode as you enter or exit a venue. Linked to all this is a rather thorny issue of pricing and perceived value.

For many years, the mobile industry has assumed that "nomadic" use of its network was a core part of its proposition, as well as when users are "truly mobile". While that might have been the case for telephony - an indoor mobile call is "worth" as much as an outdoor one - that no longer holds true for data. The assumption (increasingly, although varying by country) is that indoor data is free - provided as an amenity, equivalent to air-conditioning or lavatories. Carrier-provided indoor WiFi will be accepted by end-users as long as it is not charged against data plans, or subject too stricter policy controls than "native" WiFi. This is going to be as much a challenge for billing & charging systems as it is for the network.

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WebRTC partnerships and ecosystems

One of the things I'm expecting to hear a lot about at the upcoming Atlanta WebRTC conference & expo is partnering and the formation of vendor ecosystems.

Most enterprises and telcos putting together WebRTC solutions – even simple ones such as extensions of VoIP or messaging, or basic customer-service apps – will be reliant on multiple vendors. To this end, we are starting to see the emergence of several “ecosystems” or groups of partnerships. Disruptive Analysis views this as a critical factor for vendor success in the near term.

Some examples include:

·        Oracle/Acme works with Quobis & others

·        Ericsson partners with Mozilla

·        Crocodile is working with Telestax (Mobicents)

Over the next 3-6 months, expect to see many more similar alignments between complementary players, as well as further tactical acquisitions. Specialists such as Zingaya and Thrupoint are likely to carve important roles here, as well as a number of the API providers such as Twilio and AddLive.

I actually wrote the paragraph above in the quarterly WebRTC update I published last week for Disruptive Analysis research report subscribers. Looks like I scored a direct hit - Today I've just seen this announcement and demo from one of the companies mentioned - Zingaya - working with Cisco and another specialist firm, for a clever retail-banking WebRTC demo. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRbLnj4r71M&feature=youtu.be and more info at http://www.thrupoint.com/2013/06/thrupoint-cisco-syngrafii-light-up-mobile-banking-app/

I think this will be especially important for the growing number of vendors providing WebRTC gateways to telco or enterprise infrastructure. On its own, a gateway is going to be rather useless. It will need to be blended into particular solutions, with specific feature-sets optimised for particular use cases. It will also need to be deployed with the end-user experience in mind, and the realities of mobile apps as well. This will mean design and client-side expertise, as well as testing, security and assorted other realms of software and consulting. 

Few vendors - if any - will be able to do all of this on their own. And as yet, we haven't really seen big system integrators wake up to WebRTC, although surely that is just a matter of time. What will be important in the very short term is the establishment of concrete partnerships and developer ecosystems - I think that will be a key determinant of which vendors emerge as actual commercial winners, versus those with standalone me-too products.

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Disruptive Analysis WebRTC Q2 Update: Forecasts upgraded & New Companies/Use-Cases

I've just published the Q2 Update for the Disruptive Analysis WebRTC report, the first edition of which came out in February. That report was the first comprehensive study of the market for WebRTC, spanning telco, enterprise and consumer domains. Having covered WebRTC since Day 1 almost two years ago, my intention is to keep Disruptive Analysis in the position of leading analyst & consulting house in this sector.

The new 29-page update document is available to clients who buy the full report with the optional ongoing subscription, but some highlights are provided here. (Those who bought the standalone report can upgrade to get the updates as well - please contact me for details)

Firstly, I've upgraded most of my forecasts for both device support and expected active usage, as the original numbers looked a bit conservative in the light of recent developments. The speed of emergence of WebRTC in Firefox and Chrome-for-Android has been impressive, in particular. Also, overall smartphone growth is accelerating, while WebRTC support is being enabled by a growing range of API/cloud players as well, which aim to simplify the technology for mobile developers.

I'm now expecting:
• 875m devices with WebRTC vs. original forecasts of 810m for end-2013

• 1 billion device threshold crossed in Q1'2014 rather than Q2'2014

• 3.9bn devices supporting WebRTC, upgraded from 3.4bn, for end-2016
• Active user base (individuals) for WebRTC to exceed 1.5bn people by end-2016

Note that Disruptive Analysis' forecasts differ from some others in that estimation of primary browsers is a core step. Many users have multiple browsers installed on PCs or devices, but only use one regularly - a gating factor on realistic addressable WebRTC users for developers.

The report update also includes discussion of the fast-evolving, already-crowded market for WebRTC gateways, and the need for vendors to look for differentiation based on specific use-cases or partnerships/ecosystems to stand out. In the last 3 months numerous vendors have announced products and strategies, some aimed at carriers, some at enterprises and others with general platforms. The market is already crowded, and the addition of various open-source alternatives as well as "WebRTC as a service" cloud platforms will make it even harder for generic me-too gateways to gain traction.

In terms of strategic issues, there's an update on what Microsoft's intentions might be, as well as a viewpoint on the VP8 vs. H.264 impasse. My view is that MS is focused mainly on Lync/Skype/XBox integration as a strategic corporate opportunity, but will also start progressively adding support for WebRTC as it gets standardised - perhaps as well as its own CU-RTC-Web proposed alternate version. The video codec situation is messy and has no obvious near-term resolution. It's worth noting that two major H.264 advocates (Apple & Microsoft) are losing both credibility and moral authority with late provision of WebRTC-enabled browsers compared to Chrome and Firefox, which are helping define VP8 as the de facto video codec for web developers irrespective of the "official" standards work.

This highlights the difference between "adding RTC to the Web" vs. "adding Web to RTC" - the former use cases and players move at web-speed, while the latter group tends to be constrained by the pace of traditional comms-business proceses (telco or enterprise).

The document also looks at the current real-world use-cases (eg contact centre agents) and predicts the trends over the next 6-12 months. The proliferation of a startups in broad class of cloud/API-enablement players points to a coming rush of consumer-web applications for video-chat or integrated comms in H2'2013. Datachannels support in new browsers suggest innovation in domains like content-sharing and collaboration (including coding for developers). In addition, I'm expecting WebRTC-enabled adverts to be a major part of the future landscape.

Telco use of WebRTC is bubbling under the surface - there's clearly a lot of interest, but I expect it to emerge relatively slowly because of the need for new "furniture" like BSS/OSS and testing solutions. Over-focus on standards will also cost telcos the lead, as I disussed in this recent post. And while IMS-integrated WebRTC is interesting, it is only one of 5 or 10 possible telco use-cases - operators' executives should ensure that numerous departments consider the opportunities for the technology, not just the core/voice network and labs teams which may be too slow and conservative. If necessary, telcos' innovation arms should be prepared to disintermediate their own voice/messaging teams and "BYOWebRTC" instead.

The update also gives quick commentary on about 50 vendor/service players in the WebRTC marketplace, including the addition of 20-30 companies not mentioned in the original report.

If you are interested in purchasing the original main WebRTC report, details are here  

For more details on the quarterly update subscription or other WebRTC advisory services, please email/message information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

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Is Israel about to ban carrier WiFi offload?

I didn't see this coming at all - according to this article on Azi Ronen's blog, the Israeli government wants to ban carrier WiFi in public places, and has been consulting on this for some time, and will publish an official statement this week. I have to admit it's the first I've heard of it.

"The reason for banning the use of Wi-Fi is spectrum shortage, and letting CSPs to use these frequencies will limit the public access to the internet. Nevertheless, municipalities and other public organizations will be allowed to offer free public Wi-Fi services"

The article Azi links to (put through Google Translate) suggests that Israel has allocated less spectrum to WiFi than most of the rest of the world and as a result there is a lot more contention for it. The two tables and notes on this Wikipedia page shows that the country does indeed block certain channels in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. The article also hints that the Ministry would like to clear other chunks of spectrum to use for WiFi in future.

Having been to Tel Aviv recently, it's worth commenting that there is free WiFi pretty much everywhere. Any restaurant or bar, as well as the airport, a lot of shopping malls and other public places, had free WiFi - either totally open or with a code provided for those who ask.

(This isn't the first instance of WiFi regulatory weirdness in Israel - 4 years ago it stopped iPads being brought into the country temporarily because of fears over congestion from too-powerful radios, or perhaps inability to lock-out certain channels)

While this might be a country-specific isolated law, it raises an interesting set of general issues and points.

Firstly, it could be argued that Carrier WiFi offload is a less-valuable use of unlicenced spectrum than venue/app-sponsored free WiFi, because it doesn't add to the overall amount of (free) Internet Access available to citizens in public places. Instead, it just substitutes one form (3G/4G) for another (WiFi), with the benefit of "offload" accruing to the operator, rather than end-users or (implicitly) the economy. Yes, offload WiFi is often "free" or excluded from mobile broadband quotas to subscribers, but it is typically locked-out or fee-based for non-subscribers.

Secondly it points out that WiFi used for (free) public Internet access is rapidly becoming a public amenity and that governments are starting to protect it. As well as various municipal WiFi projects provided by authorities themselves, we also have other legal rules on commercial provision of WiFi - for example Kuala Lumpur mandates that restaurants offer free WiFi. I also had a chat with a telecoms regulator a couple of years ago that mused that if WiFi use became sufficiently important and valuable, it might need laws to protect it - for example, against other uses of 2.4GHz such as leaky microwave ovens or garage door-openers. Increasing usage and popularity of WiFi points to the fact that a lot of smartphone/tablet use is "nomadic" rather than properly moving-about mobile - and therefore not really cellular operators' supposed target market anyway. Is "non-mobile" WiFi really a service? Or is it an amenity like air-conditioning and public bathrooms, or even electrical sockets in cafes?

Thirdly, it points to a dilemma for telcos - if they start using WiFi and unlicenced spectrum aggressively, it becomes very hard - hypocritical even - for them to lobby against more spectrum being made licence-exempt in future. Obviously they would prefer to have licenced bands allocated to individual operators, but just without expensive auction fees.

Fourth, this type of law is going to be quite hard to frame. Does it just ban carrier WiFi offload (ie actual substitution of 3G/4G traffic for WiFi) or does it also apply to all the other operator-led WiFi business models and purposes? My view has long been that "offload" is probably only the 3rd or 4th most important thing that telcos can do with WiFi anyway - more interesting models are open-to-all "onload", managed WiFi for venues, wholesale WiFi for other service providers, "shared WiFi" models like FON, location analytics and so on. WhileWiFi offload itself doesn't improve public amenity of Internet access, some of the others generally go.

Fifthly, there's always the outside chance of a "conspiracy theory" here - or at least some well-crafted game theory. If extra carrier WiFi in public places does congest unlicenced bands and interfere with other providers such as free hotspots in cafes, then implicitly it raises the utility and value of managed/licenced spectrum and mobile broadband plans. It would also make things like small cells much more attractive to end-users and venue owners. But surely nobody in the mobile industry would be that Machiavellian or cynical (or that smart) to do such a thing?

Lastly, this throws into question the legality/acceptability of various "seamless" WiFi log-on technologies like ANDSF and Hotspot 2.0. As I wrote last week, I already think that these are problematic from an end-user point of view, but this adds a whole other angle.

Overall, I'm a bit wary of this proposed legislation. While I certainly think that "seamless offload" and WiFi-integrated HetNets are problematic for all sorts of reasons, I'm definitely a supporter of what I'd call "WiFi Neutrality" - that users should be able to connect to whichever wireless ISP they wish and not be forced/blocked by external forces. I had telcos restricting "private" WiFi in mind, but this could equally apply to governments as well. (Employers and parents enforcing restrictions are OK for obvious reasons). I regularly use various forms of carrier WiFi - although in the UK this is usually provided by fixed rather than mobile operators. What would happen with hybrid fixed/cellular telcos, eg BT now has LTE spectrum - would Openzone be banned under the Israeli proposals, or just any use of it for offload?

This is a complex area and while (as far as I can tell from a brief article) the Israeli government's intentions are sound, there is a lot of complexity in the details.

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