Mobile VoIP and Video

By: Richard “Zippy” Grigonis

Mobile remains the most exciting segment of the telecom world. There are a growing, perhaps bewildering number of technologies blossoming that support advanced forms of wireless voice and video, whether it be the simple forwarding of calls and PBX functions to a cell phone or laptop softphone to more sophisticated Fixed-Mobile Convergence scenarios involving dual-mode handsets and Kineto Wireless (News - Alert)’ Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) extension of GSM over WiFi, Femtocells, the VCC (Voice Call Continuity) capabilities associated with IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), and other alphabet soup acronyms and initialisms that have been discussed and debated in U.S. and Europe for some time now. When it comes to real-time video calls to the masses (and perhaps Mobile Video in general), it appears that Asia is poised eagerly to embrace the technology before the rest of the world gets its infrastructure in order, though some interesting products have suddenly appeared recently for carriers and providers that should be enticing even for us Westerners.

For example, there’s a pioneering company out there called Octro that offers technology capable of doing real-time P2P video conference calls via mobile (it’s optimized for one-handed operation on Symbian (News - Alert) and Windows Mobile devices). Currently, their OctroTalk always-on product keeps you connected with your colleagues and buddies anywhere. It works seamlessly over GPRS, EDGE, CDMA, WiFi (News - Alert) and Bluetooth data connections, down-shifting to a low bandwidth codec if necessary. OctroTalk supports GoogleTalk/Jabber, MSN, AIM, ICQ and Yahoo instant messaging. (You can create/join Jabber conference rooms and do GroupChat/Conferencing.) Your messages can be archived in your Gmail account. A complete VoIP product, you can call upon secure and encrypted connections to GoogleTalk; and you also have access to the PSTN. You can share files with your buddies via automated file transfer (with quick picture messaging), and you can even install OctroTalk for Windows on your desktop and share a folder with OctroTalk running on your mobile handset.

Additionally, Octro’s new OctroVideo product specializes in enabling you to stream video directly from your mobile phone using JPEG compression. You have options to configure the frame rate, picture quality, etc. and anyone with a web browser can view what you are streaming. You can place a call using OctroTalk or a regular cell phone and then convert the call into a video conference. There are multiple options to stream video over GPRS/CDMA/3G/WiFi connections. P2P video conferencing is available via use of OctroTalk.

The Octro Video Conferencing Solution is currently available for Symbian and Windows Mobile.

Peer-to-peer video calling and multi-point video conferencing is also now available on mobile phones in the form of Global IP Solutions (News - Alert)’ VideoEngine Mobile, which runs on the Windows Mobile platform. This technology enables wireless carriers, app developers and mobile handset makers to provide peer-to-peer video calling and multi-point video conferencing on Windows Mobile phones which have a front-facing camera.

The GIPS VideoEngine suite also includes VideoEngine PC, which is a voice and video processing solution optimized for softphone applications on PC platforms, and the VideoEngine PC SDK that enables developers to build sophisticated Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC) applications on SIP-based voice and video processing. The VideoEngine suite is based on advanced techniques that maintain optimal synchronized audio and video by reducing packet jitter and packet loss, as well as compensating for CPU and bandwidth constraints. To be specific, GIPS has partnered with Marvell (News - Alert) Technology to ensure that its media processing software will have the cutting edge mobile phone features found on the Marvell chipset and to highly optimize it for XScale PXA310 devices including the Hewlett-Packard iPAQ series, Samsung's (News - Alert) SGH-i780 and Gigabyte's GSmart MS808.

FMC encompassing voice, video and data can be brought to Small-to-Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) with U4EA (News - Alert) Technologies’ plug-and-play, 802.11n ready, Fusion 300 WLAN Controller, Fusion 50 Access Points (APs) and Fusion Multi-Service Business Gateway (MSBG). The Fusion 300 supports up to 250 users and 25 APs, and U4EA’s Clarion Voice provides literally out-of-the-box support for toll-quality voice and fast, seamless roaming. The U4EA MSBGs can provide an impressive nine QoS (Quality of Service) classes that guarantee wireline bandwidth and control packet loss and delay for VoIP and other mission-critical applications and hosted services. The Fusion 300 WLAN Controller can also be deployed as a stand-alone solution, integrating seamlessly into any SMB LAN.

Recently, U4EA Technologies rolled out its Fusion 300 Wireless LAN Controller and APs at a New Hampshire high school that’s using the setup to enable entire classrooms to connect simultaneously to a wireless network. The school did have a wireless system in place previously, but it had sketchy performance and the teachers and IT staff spent a lot of class time trying to resolve performance issues. The new WiFi setup, designed specifically for SMBs, has proven simple, reliable and cost-effective, and – as a result – the school district is now expanding it to other schools within its district.

Building Blocks

Octasic (News - Alert) Inc., of Montreal, Canada, is a major provider of media processing silicon and software solutions for the converged carrier, enterprise and end-point communication equipment markets. They’re known for their VoIP DSP (Digital Signal Processor (News - Alert)) solutions based on their Opus asynchronous DSP architecture.

James Awad, Octasic’s Product Marketing Manager, says, “We supply chips that goes into everything from carrier equipment to enterprise devices. We’re at the bottom of the food chain, providing the foundation upon which everyone builds their products and services, such as the DSPs for media gateways. Our contribution to mobile VoIP and video is very much from a cost perspective. We’re in the MIPs race, the race of doing something better than the next guy – faster, cheaper, easier. We biggest thing we do is to enable video services to available at an affordable price point. Right now our belief is that video isn’t taking off because people don’t or they don’t know how to use it, but because it’s just not yet affordable. It doesn’t make sense for the providers to roll it out, and when they do, it’s too expensive. Our contribution therefore is to offer best-in-class semiconductor solutions, and we really have developed DSP technology that allows us to achieve unparalleled density in terms of power, which can greatly shrink the ‘box’. We can deliver solutions that are two are three times less power hungry than our competitors, just in terms of doing video processing, be it transcoding or audio component processing. That makes a big difference for our customers.”

“During the summer of 2008 we added video capabilities to our Vocallo DSPs, so designers of enterprise IP communication servers and media gateways can now combine voice and video on the same platform,” says Awad. “With integrated voice and video on a single chip, both enterprise communication server makers and core gateway manufacturers can quickly develop advanced video capabilities without spending a lot of money.”

New Forms of Wireless Broadband

Whereas existing 3G and WiFi technologies can handle mobile Voice/VoIP and some data, mobile video will devour sufficient bandwidth to require some bolstering of the telecom infrastructure. Better high capacity wireless backhaul schemes involving a combination of fiber and point-to-point microwave will be needed, and the handsets themselves will see such advanced wireless broadband radio interfaces as WiMAX (News - Alert) (soon) and LTE or Long-Term Evolution (2011, maybe).

One dark horse candidate in this department is a wireless service called wMax (no relation to WiMAX), promoted by a company called xG Technology (News - Alert), Inc. that plans to launch data and modem services in 2009. (They already have FCC approval.) wMax is said to have a signal range of 7.55 miles at 900MHz, compared with 2.3 miles for GSM, 2.46 miles for WiMAX and 2.53 miles for UMTS (3G) when all are run at equivalent average power output.

xG Technology has also developed what they call the xG Flash Signal, which is said to be able to enhance almost any type of wired or wireless communication, including voice, data, and video. xG Technology is currently designing commercial VoIP products based on xG Flash Signal that will offer significant improvements in speed, range, and power savings over existing technologies.

There are a number of strange rumors surrounding the secretive xG Technology company involving a reclusive Swiss billionaire and other things, so it should be interesting to see whether wMax will suddenly explode on the telecom scene and give WiMAX and LTE (News - Alert) and run for its money.

See You Then…

A recent report from NSR (Northern Sky Research), predicts that mobile TV and mobile video services will grow about ten-fold to 566 million users by 2013. In the short term, the iPhone (News - Alert) and other smartphones will serve as the platform for the mobile real-time VoIP, as time goes on, all sorts of gizmos and solutions will appear. IT

Richard Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC (News - Alert)’s IP Communications Group.

Global IP Solutions – (www.gipscorp.com)

Octasic – (www.octasic.com)

Octro – (www.octro.com)

U4EA Technologies – (www.u4eatech.com)

xG Technology – (www.xgtechnology.com)

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