Wireless Utopia

Its been some time since the X Series was announced. The X Series is a flat rate subscriber plan which bundles mobile broadband with popular applications such as Sling Media, iSkoot (an interoperable VoIP Client) and Orb. Since then there has been a growing interest in it with several influential bloggers pointing out the implications. BW has now picked up the thread and is carrying a detailed analysis of it.

So why this much interest? Its the old battle of open gardens of the internet against the walled gardens approach of the Telcos. So are the Telco's really opening up? Some breakaway carriers are. They are right now bit players in terms of subscriber base and they hope to increase it by providing the same services which the bigger players refuse to. It was predicted before. T Mobile embraced UMA for the same reason. Now the focus really is how effective these plans are. Can they dent the numbers of the Verizon's and Vodafone's?

If they do succeed, which is a big if, true disruption will happen. The best answer to this if is the question of data service. Data service is and will always be an add on feature for the mobile phone. Its the voice service which matters the most. Mobile phones are primarily used for voice and voice revenue, although on the decline, are still the major chunk of operators pie. And the Internet VoIP Services, the Skype's and GTalk can never better the quality of the plain old circuit switched voice calls. For the simple reason that its an unmanaged network. There is no guarantee of QoS there. Which means that an important call might drop anytime! You cannot rely on the service nor claim any support for it.

The Telco. killing VoIP service is still not there. Skype has come closest to it. But it needs to be improved upon if you want to really kill the Telcos. The X Series will have an impact on the final outcome though. Its testing the waters.

Update: Its a mutiny rather than a revolution, says Om.