Tuesday, April 11, 2006
The Last Remaining Barrier to UMA Technology in the US
Posted by Ekkie Tepsupornchai in "OFF-TOPIC" @ 11:00 AM
"Cell phones are fantastic tools for making oneself available; no one disputes that. The problem is coverage and occasional weak reception indoors or at the edge of a cell. For some time, cell phones with built-in support for 802.11b/g and the capability to make calls over VoIP have been touted as a solution to the problem... The big question is when these phones will make it to market. At CES in January of this year, I spent some time at the Nokia booth... they had a couple of prototype WiFi/cellular phones that looked very cool. The problem, he explained, was getting any US carrier to agree to stock and support a phone with WiFi VoIP capability."
We've been talking about UMA on-and-off now for sometime. It certainly appears that the technology is ready and in my opinion, the market is ripe for this solution... but the question is how long will the US cellular carriers be able to delay its introduction? At what point does the market demand win over the protectionism of an industry's revenue stream?
We've been talking about UMA on-and-off now for sometime. It certainly appears that the technology is ready and in my opinion, the market is ripe for this solution... but the question is how long will the US cellular carriers be able to delay its introduction? At what point does the market demand win over the protectionism of an industry's revenue stream?
