Software Integration, Interoperability Key to Video-over-WiFi Mobile Phones

By David Brown

January 29, 2007

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It is predicted that in 2007, the industry will finally break through the barriers that have prevented the mass-market adoption of videophones. All of the fundamentals are now in place to make videophones -- wired and Wi-Fi -- available to consumers:

• The widespread adoption of broadband (and Wi-Fi networks) in the home, now in excess of 50 percent penetration in many parts of Asia, Europe and North America, enables true mass-market potential in the "connected home";
• Moore's Law continues to drive processing power forward, enabling support for the computationally complex media processing algorithms that are required to deliver reliable and high-quality full motion video;
• Advances in battery technology and power management enabling Wi-Fi-based devices with standby and talk times that can be measured in days and hours rather than minutes; and
• The continued maturity of industry standards and the increasingly sophisticated voice and video over IP (V2IP) software solutions that make it all happen.

Despite nearly 40 years of development, price and performance have remained stumbling blocks to delivering a mass market solution. Even as we moved from analog videophones to digital IP, constrained networks and a lack of processing power created a price/performance ratio that was unacceptable to the consumer market.

These issues are quickly becoming obsolete with the proliferation of wired and wireless broadband networks, coupled with highly-capable voice/video processing technology.

So let's turn our attention to the fourth item - software. When IP-connected devices don't perform properly, the blame and focus fall squarely on this piece of the solution. And in most cases, it should.

Robust Platform

Consumer and enterprise devices - whether a phone or any personal communication and multimedia device - must provide a compelling and reliable user experience to successfully create a mainstream market. As a result, the quality and reliability of wireless transmissions play an important role in the success of Wi-Fi videophones.

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