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G. Venkatesh

V. Sridhar

The much-awaited Google Voice service is expected to change the way telephone services are managed traditionally.

In 2007, Google acquired GrandCentral, a phone management service company, for $50 million.

GrandCentral promised to do away with the headache of managing multiple phone numbers — one for home, another for mobile and so on — by allocating a single number for life!

The idea, launched in 2006, failed to really take off. Google now hopes to make it work. The Google Voice number promises to be a master phone number — allowing you to program it over the Web to forward calls to your existing phone numbers. The number can be used to send and receive SMS, with forwards to your mobile phone.

The service will also allow you to archive and search among text massages on your phones; transcribe voice mail messages for archival; allow multiparty conferencing and so on.

In essence, you get to manage all your voice communication needs instead of requesting telcos to do it. And, to top it all, your business card will carry just the one Google Voice number. Even if your other phone numbers change, you won’t have to reprint your card!

Google Voice will greatly alter telephone number management as it exists today. Take, for example, Mobile Number Portability (MNP), which allows subscribers to keep the same mobile number while switching service providers.

Though it seems to directly benefit subscribers and increase competition, telecom companies (telcos) have been reluctant to implement it, citing huge costs. However, Google Voice ensures you don’t need MNP to switch operators.

Similarly, you don’t need your telco for voice mail service. Google Voice will collect all your voice mails, transcribe and store them in an accessible (from phone as well as Web) form.

This will bring about a paradigm shift — moving intelligence from the network (the ‘intelligent networks’ owned by telcos) to the periphery and end users. The “stupid” Internet acts as a transmission medium to send packets from the origin to the destination.

Using the power of PCs and Smartphones, users configure and implement the services they want. Services such as Google Voice can be provided by several smaller firms using the Internet.

Google Voice is likely to cause a shakeout similar to what Skype did with its superior Internet Telephony platform. Google will route calls at wholesale, almost free cost , bringing down call costs to unbelievably low levels.

If, and when, it becomes available in India mobile users can potentially enjoy unlimited calls at a flat rate (say Rs 500 a month) — similar to that offered by Cricket or Boost Mobile in the US.

It is time telcos and policymakers woke up to these realities. Telcos offering “intelligent networks” began outsourcing the increasingly complex technical functions to the network equipment vendors, who in turn outsourced it to third-party service providers.

This spawned an ecosystem comprising firms that researched, implemented and maintained features in the network equipment.

However, with intelligence moving away from the network, all players in this ecosystem need to rethink their next move.

Age-old regulation that compartmentalises services with restrictions on ownership and service offerings must give way to a newer form that takes into account convergence of technologies, networks and services.

The traditional telcos that dictated the shape of telecommunication services are now challenged by the Googles and the Skypes that empower end users with powerful software and Internet-based applications and services.

Though the shift is going to be slow, thanks to regulations, it is likely to be as disruptive as the Internet itself.

Dr G. Venkatesh is CTO/CSO of Sasken Communication Technologies and Dr V. Sridhar, a visiting research fellow. Views expressed are personal.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Convergence

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