In the South American country of Guyana, use of calling services provided by Digicel (News - Alert) and the Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Co. account  for 16 percent of the country's total sales tax revenues. So it perhaps is not surprising that the Guyana government reportedly plans to close hundreds of Internet cafes that it accuses of bypassing the telephone company system to offer cheap international calls.

 

The issue here is not whether this is a praiseworthy or dastardly thing, rather it is that voice, video, audio and other services of all sorts, including VoIP, occur in a specific business and regulatory-legal context.

 

It sometimes is argued that because IP-enabled voice services have spread, creating business models for some contenders that all contenders should convert rapidly to the new platform. The argument used to be driven by hypothesized user interest in attractive new  features. And there is some merit to that argument, but not as much as people once had hoped would quickly be the case.

 

So far, VoIP services and applications of all sorts have been driven completely, largely or in large part because of end user cost savings.  Of course, one entity's cost is another entity's revenue, so the motivation to switch to VoIP is differentiated.

 

There's no question that cost-conscious consumers will continue to migrate to some VoIP apps, at least some of the time, for international calling, for example. There is no question that some VoIP providers will make a business out of this. What is not clear is that all service providers can make a business out of it, at the moment, on a mass deployed basis.

 

Some will argue, for example, that mobile providers should switch to VoIP. Times are tough and users will want to save money. That is undeniable. But a fair amount of analysis probably is needed to figure out when, and under what conditions, a mobile provider does better by widely deploying VoIP for international calling, to take the obvious example.

 

High tariffs are a benefit to mobile providers. And even if mobile VoIP applications are available that allow cheaper calling, a provider still has to conduct a fairly extensive analysis to figure out whether it is better off allowing some traffic to siphon off to mobile VoIP while keeping high tariffs, lowering tariffs without any conversion to VoIP, or abandoning legacy calling mechanisms and converting to VoIP for voice traffic.

 

In fact, this is the same sort of analysis that any incumbent wired services provider already has had to undertake. So far, one would have to say that some providers have concluded they have more to lose than to gain by switching to lower-cost retail VoIP services, and frankly are better off facing some amount of cannibalization for a while. Others, in highly-competitive markets in Western Europe, have concluded they have no choice but to compete aggressively.

 

Mobile VoIP increasingly is possible. Users making international calls can benefit from using it. What isn't clear is that mobile service providers benefit from aggressively offering mobile VoIP, and at what prices, at the moment. "Vision" and "bravery" are not the issues. Dispassionately analysis of the revenue implications are called for.

 

Clearwire (News - Alert), in fact, is the only North American mobile carrier with a different set of fundamental options at this point. It has negligible voice revenue to cannibalize, and therefore could make different assumptions about mobile VoIP. Clearwire might well conclude that IP is the only way for it to provide voice services. It might also conclude there are different possible price points.

 

In another five or so years, other mobile providers - even those with significant voice operations - might be facing a different set of facts upon which to base their decisions. Once data services are closer to representing half or more of total revenue, different possibilities will exist for offering mobile VoIP as a mainstay.