2015 will be a defining year for 'free' voice services, with consumers and small businesses the major beneficiaries.
So says Brian Timperley, MD of Turrito Networks, noting major global tech players are increasingly providing over-the-top (OTT) voice services that run over data networks.
Market analyst firm Ovum says since Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp in February 2014, both companies have strengthened their market positions. By November 2014, Facebook Messenger had 500 million monthly active users to WhatsApp's 600 million, largely due to Facebook's decoupling of the Facebook Messenger mobile app from the Facebook mobile app.
Ovum adds Tencent's WeChat is also closing in on half a billion monthly active users, and apps such as Kakao, Line, and Viber Media have hundreds of millions of users.
WhatsApp this week unveiled its long-awaited voice calling feature to all Android users, allowing users to call contacts, as well as text them.
"WhatsApp has nearly a billion users, the backing of Facebook, and a well-resourced team in Africa working on a free voice service that can manage low bandwidth availability. Microsoft Skype for Business is gaining ground, and it's only a matter of time before the likes of Google become adopted on-mass as a consumer replacement for 'traditional' phone calls," says Ovum.
"Another influencing factor driving free voice services is the continuing drop in data costs," says Timperley. "Even when you're not paying for the cost of a call, you're still paying for the data you use to make the call - and those costs are plummeting."
Traditionally, Internet-based voice services have suffered from poor call quality. However, that is becoming less of an issue for those fortunate enough to have decent access to cellular and WiFi data services, he notes.
"Most of us already use tools like Skype and WhatsApp in our daily lives and consumers are very happy with the experience. Small businesses are always under pressure to control their costs and we believe there'll be a significant uptake for consumers and small business to adopt the cheaper calls through WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Google services in the next year."
Eckart Zollner, business development manager at Jasco Group, says mobile operators could provide applications that change the way consumers use OTT voice services.
"They could provide an application that provides a single user interface where I can aggregate my favourite, say three or five, OTT providers through such a single application. Here I can see all my favourite feeds in one screen and easily navigate between them. This application can have a separate billing associated with all the data through it," says Zollner.
As another example, he notes, the operators can push their own generated content through the OTT applications.
"They can create their own community pages and provide relevant content, such as entertainment, areas of interest, event information and so on. They can build their own communities through specific pages or feeds."
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