Google Talk and Wi Fi: The Rebirth of telephony?

I just happened to be reading this book on computer networking by Andrew S Tanenbaum. For all of you who have ever done something in computer networking I’m sure you don’t need any introduction as to how amazing and author this guy is. Well anyway, I happened to be reading up about mobile communication standards in his book. What struck me in all cases was how most of the time, in the development of computer networks, it has always been telephony that has been developed first and then the same infrastructure is then built upon to support data.

For e.g. you had PSTN first and then dial up internet was built on that. You then got DSL and then ADSL built on that for broadband access. Even cable internet was again technology being put on top of your television channel. If you take mobile communications, then you have GSM on top of which GPRS is built and once CDMA became a hit, you had data services and high speed connections via CDMA. Makes you wonder then what has this got to do with Wi Fi. I’ll come to that later on…

Well now the funny thing is that once you had data over telephony, we then started trying to put voice over this data. Why? It was just cheaper. So you had things like VoIP born. Already popular chat systems like yahoo and msn then grabbed this opportunity to provide voice services (for free) between computers. Not bad. I know when it costed you more than Rs40 a min to call the US, talking for just Rs.20 an hour on your dial up via a messenger was pretty cool!

So messengers became cool and off late a company then spun in to the foray called Skype! Well those guys were a runaway success. Adding users at a rapid pace because their voice technology was just amazing. In fact just today I used Skype and I must say that voice clarity on it is definitely better than what else you have out there. Apart from that Skype also lets you call up land line phones, mobile phones and even have calls coming into your phones diverted to your Skype account. Some pretty nifty features which of course come at a price. So there you have it now, net telephony becoming the hot piece of pie.

Which now brings us to Google. The search company that is practically weaving a thick mist over what they’re really planning to roll out. GMail, Google News and now you have their latest entrant, Google Talk what I prefer to call GTalk now. GTalk is a pretty cool application. Light weight and even a real dumbo could use it without any hassles. No audio tuning wizards, just hit a button and talk. Although I must admit that its still a bit glitchy. Guess that’s why they still label it as a ‘Beta’!

So back to Wi Fi. Hmmm.. Probably something that has come up more as a by product of Ethernet. People wanting to hook up to the network without wires. So there you have a technology which for once evolved out of a networking standard rather than building technology on top of some telephony system. Wi Fi is pretty cool that way and with newer technology you’re getting faster and faster speeds. I mean just take a look at 802.11. Its pretty cool stuff. And now the interesting thing is that there are rumors of Google providing internet access via Wi Fi. So for those who have been wondering why Google has been buying up lots of high speed links. Again a rumor, I’m not claiming any of this to be true, but that’s what’s floating around. So, in the near future Google is going to be bringing you Wi Fi based internet. Interesting…

So now there’s just one link remaining, I hope you’ve read this far cause this is where things get interesting. You have GTalk, and you have G-WiFi. What does that mean. Well ever thought of using google talk to talk to you friends while you were on the move? Not possible right? How could you do that, you’d run a big bill on you cell phone if you were trying to dial up. Or else the GPRS charges would be prohibitive. The whole cost effectiveness of this free system would be lost. Enter WiFi. Now you go around with your notebook connected to the net via WiFi and then use your GTalk, Skype, whatever to communicate with people! Amazing ain’t it?!
For once now, it seems like telephony is going to born out of data based services. And with the increasing number of articles online about WiFi enabled phones, I think you’re looking more and more at a new band of voice providers. We’re going to be seeing WiFi providers providing you with telephony. Log on and start talking with whoever you want. Switch calls, video conference, you name it and WiFi is going to provide it at a very cheap cost. I’m not too sure about how cheap a net connection via WiFi is going to be, but its definitely going to be cheaper to say use GTalk over WiFi to talk to someone in the US than to make a ISD phone call from your normal telephone handset.

Wake up world. Its finally time for the customers to get back some of the money they’ve been pouring into cell cos! Just wait a bit longer and you’ll be able to walk around Wi Fi enabled cities and just log onto the net normally with your WiFi enabled handsets and talk to anyone in the world at well I’m hoping really cheap costs! Ironic though, that what gave birth to the internet is now going to be re-born from its creation! Maybe that’s what they mean by re-birth eh?

“What comes around, goes around!”