Tata Communications Announces White Label Mobile VoIP for Carriers

By David Delony
Contributing Writer

Tata Communications has announced a “white label” solution that will allow carriers to offer their own branded mobile VoIP services.

“Mobile operators are looking for ways to evolve their services portfolio to better meet the needs of their end users,” Tata senior vice president of product and business strategy for global voice solutions Christian Michaud said. “Our mobile VoIP offerings allow operators to gain additional revenue from today’s ‘always connected’ users, and create new market segments without the significant upfront capital investment and lead time required for true native rich communication services.”

With Tata’s solution, carriers can create their own custom mobile VoIP apps and offer them to customers, with an eye toward increasing the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). In other words, carriers hope they’ll get their customers to use their app instead of Skype (News - Alert).

Carriers can offer voice, video and texting services through these custom apps, with the revenues going to the carriers instead of a third party.

Moving to VoIP instead of a carrier’s traditional infrastructure might be a tough sell to carriers, but their customers are demanding it, as evidenced by the success of services like Microsoft’s (News - Alert) Skype.

Customers live in a multi-screen world, with desktop computers, smartphones and tablets, and want to carry their conversations across devices. With traditional mobile services, they can only use one device at a time and have to move their contacts manually from device to device.

Ultimately, the carriers will have to listen to their customers and offer new kinds of packages for a new telecom market.

“Mobile VoIP can be used by MNOs or indeed fixed-line or cable players to address specific target markets or develop new service bundles such as video conferencing,” Anthony Cox (News - Alert), an associate analyst at Juniper Research, said. “Such services may be difficult or even impossible to deliver through traditional carriage methods.”

Edited by Cassandra Tucker