The worlds of Wi-Fi and VoIP have converged. Known as either VoWLAN or VoWi-Fi, this emerging hybrid technology promises to help service providers cut network costs and simultaneously improve business communications and interoffice collaboration.
Wireless LAN vendor Colubris Networks is one of latest companies to jump into this still-developing market space. The company’s goal is to lead the convergence of Wi-Fi services, including VoWLAN, into the enterprise market.
President and CEO Barry Fougere sees voice as an integral component of any eventual success Wi-Fi service providers might enjoy and says any company with VoIP as part of its communications strategy likely will add VoWLAN to its game plan.
“[Service providers] need equipment at a reasonable cost per megabyte, interoperability, universal service, and simultaneous voice and data,” he says. “We can give them the tools to do that.”
That’s a grand ambition for a four-year-old company that’s up against giants such as Nortel Networks and Cisco Systems, as well as a slew of smaller companies who have already established their footprints in the U.S. market.
MAKING ITS MARK
Waltham, Mass.-based Colubris Networks separates itself from competitors with what it calls a “wireless extension architecture,” which uses fat Access Points (AP) devices, dubbed intelligent AP, and a central management system to provide wireless LAN users with a wireline-like experience. Its competitors stand by a thin AP, or centrally managed solution.
According to Richard Webb, analyst for Wireless LAN at Infonetics Research, this allows Colubris to differentiate itself from rivals. Colubris’ counts more than 500 customers and partners.
The company has secured several alliances, including a deal with wireless handset pioneer SpectraLink and a sales agreement with Swisscom Eurospot, the largest Wi-Fi hotspot provider in Europe. Colubris has also struck OEM deals with major telecom manufacturers, including Alcatel, ADC and Juniper Networks.
In the U.S., Colubris secured a deal, in partnership with equipment provider ARRIS TeleWire Supply, with Time Warner Cable’s Houston systems to deploy a “Speed Zone” offering public wireless access to the Internet for its 720,000 subscribers and venue owners. Last December, along with Salt Lake City-based STSN, Colubris helped integrate 800 hotels and 225,000 guest rooms with wireless access.
“With this infrastructure pervasive, you’re seeing a blurring of the lines between Wi-Fi as a public access to enterprise use,” Fougere says. “It’s really about Wi-Fi as a service bundle.”
Now, the company is after the next hot area: hybrid cellular-meets-Wi-Fi phones. T-Mobile, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard announced they will release the first VoWi-Fi-enabled phone by the end of this year. With about 40% of the U.S. workforce now mobile, Fouger says the time is right for VoWi-Fi.
“It will be up to the wireless carriers to market it [to enterprises], but they will,” Fougere says.
Nevertheless, existing products are full of inconsistencies that make true deployment years away, says Aaron Vance, senior analyst for Synergy Research. “IP telephony and WLANs are still plagued by their own immaturities, which get compounded when the two are combined.”
Although Fougere concedes that U.S. carriers are less aggressive at driving VoIP and VoWi-Fi here, he notes that “economics are going to drive pragmatic carriers to realize that this technology is another tool in their toolbox…[And] we have to be ready.”
