Kineto Gets in the Ring with New Mobile VoIP App
October 23, 2009
Any Wi-Fi-enabled smartphone can potentially run Kineto's new mobile VoIP app, designed to lure carriers into competing with Skype and other free or cheap mobile VoIP services.
Kineto Wireless has introduced a mobile VoIP application designed specifically to be deployed and managed by mobile operators. The app, which leverages the operators existing voice network infrastructure, is designed to run on iPhone, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile devices.
Steve Shaw, Kinetos vice president of corporate marketing, says the offering is designed specifically to compete with popular mobile VoIP services, such as Skype. "What were doing is creating a downloadable VoIP client application, akin to what a user would download if they were to download Skype onto their iPhone," he says.
The point, Shaw says, is that mobile operators are finally starting to realize that they need to offer an alternative mobile VoIP solution to their customers. "And so what our application really does is take the mobile operators existing mobile services and deliver them like an application that can be downloaded onto your iPhone or Android phoneor, really, any smartphone with Wi-Fi," he says.
And Shaw says operators can easily offer additional benefits, including free in-network calling, routing missed VoIP calls to a users mobile voicemail, or showing the caller ID of a users mobile number even when the call has been placed over VoIP. "The mobile operator can use their clout in the marketplace to make a pretty interesting service," he says.
Ultimately, Shaw says, every aspect of the companys mobile VoIP application can be customized to meet a given operators needs. "Kineto itself is not in the applications game, so what weve put together is fairly rudimentary," he says. "What we would really be looking for is to sit down with a telecom partner and say, Okay, what are the features, what are the capabilities that you really want to entice consumers to go ahead and take this?"
That feature list, Shaw says, doesnt need to be particularly extensive. Kineto recently commissioned a YouGov survey, which found that the primary reason for downloading a mobile VoIP app was for making cheap international calls. "It wasnt presence, it wasnt instant messaging, it wasnt some of the other things that you might think of," he says. "If people take the time to start this client on their phone, theyre doing it because they want to call someone somewhere else in the world."
And so, Shaw says, a mobile operator thats willing to offer cheap international calls over VoIP might be able to persuade subscribers to use Kinetos application on their mobile phone instead of Skype. "This is going to cause them to bite the bullet and say, Normally, I charge a buck a minute to call Germany, but if youre using my Wi-Fi calling service, maybe its only 20 cents a minute," he says. "Is it better to collect 20 cents a minute versus zero cents a minute when somebody chooses to use Skype instead? We think so."
The next step, Shaw says, is for carriers to consider additional possibilities for the solutionparticularly in terms of attracting users who might not even be coming to the carrier for voice calling at all. "Whats even more interesting is the fact that this could be downloaded onto an iPod touch, or this could be bundled in with the netbook that you buy from them that has the embedded 3G modulethis could just be an icon on the desktop and youd see your mobile operators own voice service sitting there," he says.
The company is currently offering trials of the solution to qualified mobile operators, though Shaw says any progress toward deployment will inevitably be gradual. "Itll take them months before they figure out if they want to do something, and if so, what they want to do," he says. "But it seems like the timings right. The analysts we talk to say theyre getting a lot of calls from mobile operators saying, Just within the last year, Ive really started to feel the pinch from mobile VoIP providers, and Im starting to see the impact in my subscriber base so I think the timing is perfect for this type of offering."
Article courtesy of EnterpriseVoIPPlanet.com.