Communication services regain their voice

By François Dubois Do you know Sobo or ChitChat, which are voice versions of Twitter and Snapchat respectively? Or

Roger, which is reinventing ‘push to talk’ as an enriched conversation? Voice is the new trend, and this

is good news for operators, which in 2016 are set to benefit from VoLTE deployments and the revival of

RCS following the agreement between Google, the GSMA and numerous operators.

On 21 January

2016, the start-up

Roger, named after

its new ‘push to

talk’ OTT

application,

announced that it

had just completed

a round of funding

worth $1 million to develop its

services. This ‘walkie talkie’ voice communication system, in which

two people speak one after the other, might be far from

new. However, voice is regaining importance in the fiercely competitive world of messaging, and Roger, launched at the end of 2015 on iOS and in a

beta version on Android, seems to fi t with current trends. The application was designed to be like a face-to-

face conversation. Users can’t delete their voice

messages recently “saved” in the discussion thread, but

can add nuance and context elements in the form of

short texts and in particular icons and graphic tips (location, weather, notification of the message’s

importance, etc.). This aims to convey all the emotions of

a real conversation. An overhauled voice experience The voice versions of Twitter and Snapchat This round of funding for a start-up reinventing the

‘push to talk’ system, once thought abandoned, is one

of the signs of the tide turning back in the favour of the

voice experience, reinvented in multiple forms for the

user. Adopting a different style to Roger, Sobo for

example presents itself as the voice counterpart of

Twitter. The application lets users share with their

followers short voice messages lasting six seconds,

which can then be shared or downloaded. Along the same lines, the end of 2015 saw the launch of ChitChat,

a kind of voice Snapchat that lets users send short audio

messages to selected contacts, which are then

automatically deleted once they have been listened to.

However, in 2016 it’s Vyke that could be making the

headlines. With self-serving contacts and untimely

requests for personal information now increasingly

common on the web and beyond, this application lets

users “create” up to four “phone numbers” and allocate

each one to a particular context, rather than routinely disclosing your

“real” personal number.

For example, users might

allocate one number for work, another for

anything involving their

family, another for use on

social networks or for

“catch-all” purposes, etc.,

each number of course

allowing them to be contacted via the

application. T-Phone: far more than a green button! Meanwhile, the Korean operator SK Telecom

announced on 20 October 2015 that it had exceeded

the threshold of 7 million users for its T-Phone dialer,

the first integrated dialer, launched in February 2014. Indeed, T-Phone has revolutionized the operator’s

green button. In addition to providing HD calls, this

interface offers a whole host of very practical services

for users. Through this true dedicated platform,

subscribers can hold group or video calls, fi lter undesirable calls (spam, telemarketing, etc.),

manage their contacts and conduct local searches

using geolocation (restaurants, stores, etc.). Better

still, they can conduct money transfers (notably via a

donation platform), personalize the background of

their dialer, etc. What’s more, a May 2015 extension

now gives T-Phone users direct access to external

services from the platform, indicating a multitude of possibilities for the future. Zigbang (property searches)

and Baedaltong (food deliveries) became the first two

external applications available without an intermediary

through T-Phone. This hints at the future possibility of

partnerships with banks, insurance companies and

personal services, as well as the ability to synchronize

the dialer with the user’s connected objects to definitively

make it the central element of the subscriber’s

smartphone. A single phone number for all your devices In another noteworthy innovation, at the Mobile World

Congress 2016 in Barcelona on February 22, Deutsche

Telekom announced the launch of its “Immmr”

application in the second half of 2016. Immmr does away

with the conventions of “traditional” mobile telephony, as

it lets users make calls or be contacted through a single

mobile number on a whole host of devices: smartphones,

PCs, tablets, etc. This means users will be able to make

calls from any device, no matter where they are, via calls

over the internet rather than through “traditional”

networks.

Voice over LTE, of course Another phenomenon, in this case truly global, that is

expected to further bolster the attractiveness of voice

in 2016 is that operators are now speeding up the

deployment of VoLTE. This gives voice the advantage

of the unique performances of 4G, for example calls in

HD quality and very fluid video calls. According to a 2015 Ovum study of 108 operators, 80% of MNOs have

already launched or will launch their VoLTE services in

2016. Remember that there is also a reduction in costs

thanks to the consolidation of networks, as well as the

ability to develop new services. To enable VoLTE to be attractive and operational, and

therefore to keep its promises as quickly as possible,

the key challenge for operators is clear, namely the

interoperability of their networks. This is the main lesson

learned from South Korea’s example: launched by the

country’s players in 2012, it only really took off in terms of usage at the end of 2015, when the VoLTE

networks of KT, LG + and SK Telecom were fully

interoperable.

RCS given fresh impetus by Google At the MWC 2016 in Barcelona on February 22, the

GSMA and Google made a crucial announcement for

the future of messaging, particularly voice messaging:

the world’s leading association of mobile operators,

Google and operators like Vodafone, Deutsche

Telekom, Bharti Airtel, Sprint, Telenor, TeliaSonera,

Play, Orange and many others unveiled an agreement

to “transition toward a common, universal profile based

on the GSMA’s RCS specifications and an Android RCS client provided by Google in collaboration

with operators and OEMs”. In other words, the

operators will be able to deploy their own RCS (Rich

Communication Services) infrastructure on all Android

devices or, more simply, decide to use Google’s Jibe cloud platform, which will support this universal

profile in open source mode, natively installed on the Android OS. Indeed, all Android smartphones will be

compatible with these rich communication services. This

points to a strong potential for the popularization of RCS,

which will therefore be directly available on the user’s

home screen without the need for a third-party

application interface. To combat WhatsApp and more broadly Facebook, of

which it is a subsidiary, Google has decided to team up

with operators and leverage RCS, which was thought to

be down and out. Indeed, the adoption of RCS as a new

standard appears to be one of the best ways to make

operators’ green button a key feature (a bit like SK

Telecom’s T-Phone) and therefore respond to WhatsApp

and other OTT messaging service by directly offering

VoLTE, video calls, group discussions, geolocation, the

sending of photos and HD video during calls, etc. from

operators’ messaging services.

Of course, Google

is doing everything

to favour a ‘hosted

RCS’ solution,

which is completely

credible since

Google acquired

Jibe Mobile at the end of September 2015. This company is the leader in

RCS solutions based on the cloud (hosted RCS) and in

2015 signed with SFR in France and DT in Romania and

Slovakia. In truth, the alliance with Google seems to be

the best way to boost the entire RCS industry, as it will

be possible to get a uniform messaging experience that

is interoperable with all Android devices and all operators

worldwide even before the end of 2016. Operators will

then have all the tools they need to benefit from the

resurgence of voice and more broadly their customers’

appetite for voice services and their multiple new

multimedia versions.