30 Minute Interview

Helping VoIP get everywhere

Ron Victor, GM Marketing and Business Development of Hellosoft speaks to Aishwarya Ramani about the global VoIP market and Hellosoft’s innovative RISC solution that attempts to improve the processing capabilities of a cell phone processor

Ron Victor

You provide VoIP software that operates on a wireless network. How does it work?

Our software can operate on any infrastructure be it, 3G or even a landline, as long as you onnect to the Internet.

Do you work with the operating system vendors or with service providers?

We work with the operators, with the infrastructure players; we work with the handset manufacturers, all of them.

To use your VoIP software, I need to connect to a network. Can I use it on a cell that is not enabled?

You can do VoIP today on a landline. You don’t need Wi-Fi for it. You just connect to the Internet using DSL or cable. Or your laptop could be Wi-Fi enabled. If you have 3G on your handset and if you can connect via 3G to the Internet, you’ll be able to do voice using this also. The reason why Wi-Fi is so popular is because there are a lot of advantages to doing voice over wireless LAN.

Suppose you go to the basement of your building. You generally get a weak signal there. If you have Wi-Fi in that area, your call will continue. This is called in-building coverage. That is where this voice over Wi-Fi comes in handy. Secondly, India has the fastest growing cell phone subscriber base in the world. The more subscribers there are, the more consumers there are. That means there are more handsets and so you need more infrastructure. If you think about it, in the developed world, 80 percent of offices have Wi-Fi connectivity. Close to 50 percent of broadband users in the western world have Wi-Fi at home. The amount of resources consumed by an operator in servicing these subscribers inside a building is close to three to four times that of catering to that same subscriber outside the building. By resources I mean, power, antenna power, signal strength. The operator has to invest heavily in infrastructure to cater to everybody inside a building. If the operator decided that he would move all the users inside a building to another infrastructure like Wi-Fi, it would certainly help bring down costs.

Are you looking at going beyond the US and the European markets?

We are looking at the global market. There is no reason for us to look at just US or just Europe. The question is which market is ready for something like this. Some of the advanced Asian markets such as Japan and Korea seem to be ready for this concept. The developing world is still in the subscriber acquisition mode. That is leveling off in the rest of the world. In India, the cell phone is used for ringtones, SMS and voice. Now SMS, is far behind in North America. In the US they are still getting used to sending SMS. It has taken off like nobody’s business here two years ago. SMS is the “in thing” in India and Europe.

Let’s look at the smart phone market. How many users are actually writing Word documents and checking e-mail on a smart phone. The corporate user is doing that. But the average person is not still using this for checking email or connecting to a corporate network. But in Europe and America checking e-mail and connecting to the corporate network has taken off like nobody’s business. Sales force guys are looking at their orders. This will happen here also. Everything happens in India, it just happens a little later.

VoIP in India will take off on landlines rather than on mobile phones. VoIP reduces the cost of operating for a service provider. So I see BSNL, MTNL and the other players deploying VoIP. Your landline at home will be VoIP enabled before the technology is deployed over a mobile phone.

Are you working with any Indian operator? Do you plan to?

We are not engaged actively with any operator in India at this point. Half the world and even India is already VoIPised. When you call America, your whole call is not a packet switched call like it used to be. At some point before it reaches the undersea cable; it becomes a packet. It stayed analog only from your phone till the operator’s NOC. All international calls in the world are using VoIP.

Why should one invest in an IP phone when one can use any popular instant messaging service and have a voice conversation for free?

There are several limitations on instant messaging the first of which is PC ownership. What’s PC penetration in India? Moreover, not too many people in India are savvy enough to use a PC. Cyber cafes are still doing very well.

So even in a more advanced market where people are savvy enough, why should they spend on making a call when they can do Google Talk for free?

There is one device a person carries all the time and that is the cell phone. So I have to be accessible on this device and still have a free call. So I put Google talk on this. Skype is one of our customers. But if the person you are trying to call is not online, then you would go back to a calling card or your landline. What if you had Wi-Fi on this instrument? You would do a regular call using VoIP and cost would be 1/10th of the call made from a cell phone.

There are at least about a hundred handsets in the world today that are Wi-Fi enabled. Practically every new handset that is coming out is now Wi-Fi enabled. Nokia believes half the world will be using Wi-Fi by 2008.

Tell us something about your new VoIP technology.

Our advantage is that our software is RISC based. That means we took out the need for a DSP. Traditionally any form of VoIP was done on a DSP. A lot of number crunching was required which consumed a lot of power. In the typical architecture of a phone, there is something called a control processor and then there’s a DSP that does the algorithm crunching. What Hellosoft invented four and a half years back takes all the complexities of the VoIP algorithm, optimises it to use lesser memory and storage and now the VoIP software runs on that control processor. You don’t need the DSP processor any more. This helps me cut $5 from the bill of materials of a device which translates to $15 to 20 before it hits the shelves.

Take an OMAP processor for example. It has a RISC Component and a DSP Component. Now, when we run VoIP, it runs on the RISC core. Because of this you can start running video on the DSP processor.

We are in talks with the largest CDMA manufacturer in the world for voice call continuity, the call seamlessly transfers. I start with Wi-Fi, go to GSM and there is no break.