Bring Your Own Wireless: How Smart Mobile Phones are Revolutionizing Wireline Customers

The demise of the landline is all too often explained by the attraction of and flight to mobile services. But landline operators should not just throw in the towel. The advent of smart phones and ubiquitous 3G/HSDPA data networks may be exactly what they need to keep their own landline operations alive--and even thrive.

Contrary to popular belief "smart" applications don't need to be tied to smart phones. Indeed, applications that were created for mobile networks such as visual voicemail have now been further enhanced for wireline services. For example, landline operators are consolidating all voicemail traffic (even from services that they don't supply - i.e., mobile) into a single unified mailbox. Access to this mailbox is then provided through a feature-rich application for iPhone, Blackberry, and Android devices, among others. These applications support visual voice mail, fax retrieval, forward as email, on-demand transcription and more. A user's wireline service is further enhanced with mobile apps that allow users to select contacts on their mobile phone and initiate calls to their landline service. But why stop there? Smart phone applications also exist for controlling wireline conferencing services - allowing mobile users to start and administer calls from an intuitive handheld app.

During this session, Metaswitch will discuss how the creative use of communication widgets is providing ultimate control of communication services from any user portal--web, smart phone, set-top box--and how landline operators can build intelligent IP voice networks that enable mobile access to their services, ultimately enabling a complementary and profitable technology.