However, research is well on the way and it seems that it will be less than a year before we can talk about Voice over WiFi or VoWiFi. On the other hand, it is obvious that there are several problems that the VoWiFi providers will have to deal with before the models are commercialized on the market.

First of all, there is the issue of security, something I have also referred to when discussing Voice over IP. The problem does not actually refer to security itself, but to the fact that voice transmission may be affected by the security protocols installed to protect the data exchange. In many ways, this is similar to what we are experiencing nowadays when we have a firewall installed. The problem with voice transmission is, however, that you have to have a fluent and cursive voice packages transmission, otherwise the entire conversation is no longer useful. With data, it is less this case, since the packages are not necessarily conditioned by their arrival at a certain time.

The second problem VoWiFi providers may be dealing with is that the 802.11 WiFi standards "are not designed to handle voice." This means that, first of all, the standards need to be adapted and somewhat modified so that phone calls and voice packages will have the upper hand over data, following the same idea that I have mentioned in the paragraph here above. This is expected to occur somewhere in the fall of 2004. As...

VoWiFi services are expected to consume much larger amounts of energy than their cellular counterparts. It seems only logical that this problem needs to be solved, since it is less likely that customers will be willing to use this service only for a few hours.
Bibliography

1. Brown, Eric. Voice Over WiFi: the Great Disrupter. August 2004. On the Internet at http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/08/wo_brown081104.asp

2. VoIP: It's not just saving money. On the Internet at http://www.worldonip.com/voip.htm

3. Voice over Internet Protocol. White Paper, on the Internet at http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/searchNetworking/downloads/VoIP_Dvorak.pdf

VoIP: It's not just saving money. On the Internet at http://www.worldonip.com/voip.htm

Voice over Internet Protocol. White Paper, on the Internet at http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/searchNetworking/downloads/VoIP_Dvorak.pdf

Brown, Eric. Voice Over WiFi: the Great Disrupter. August 2004. On the Internet at http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/08/wo_brown081104.asp