Today (or last night, actually) marks a sea-change in wireless communications: the iPhone Skype application debuted. It is also coming to the Blackberry. Why is this such a disruptive change? Because it represents the final move to data convergence. With the implementation of Skype on cell phones, the voice officially becomes "data." Actually, it has been data since the implementation of digital wireless voice transmission over a decade ago, but Skype represents a transition to cellular communication via Voice-over-Interntet-Protocol (VoIP). With VoIP, a voice call becomes just another Internet connection.
For the short-term, Apple and AT&T are throttling the availablility of Skype to Wi-Fi connections only (not available on EDGE or 3G), but this is only temporary. AT&T may disagree about how temporary it is, but it is temporary. This is because the battle lines have been drawn. AT&T (and by extension, all the other wireless carriers) want to protect their tariffs for charging for voice calls by the minute. The reason is simple; it makes them lots of money. But Skype makes the voice call just another data stream, no different than a song playing on Pandora or a video playing on YouTube. Voice communication becomes bundled with the phone's data plan.
Why this is an issue with the phone company is simple. For the iPhone, the lowest phone plan is $39.99. However, an unlimited data plan is $20.00. Of course, at present AT&T forces you to have both a phone and data plan. Now this is going to change. It is only a matter of time for a company such as Metro PCS to start offering unlimited data/phone plans for a set rate. In the short-term this means that phone plans will decrease in price while data plans increase. In the long-term, there will only be one type of plan--data.
The reason this is a major issue is that carriers make their money off of voice services since they are billed at a higher rate than data. For one thing, they are on a per minute charge (or the user is forced to purchase a group of minutes for a set rate). The carriers like individual rates for voice, SMS, and similar services. For example, of a per minute basis, SMS is the highest cost service on a cellular phone.
With the Skype service, this is going to change--and change disruptively. Already, Skype is the largest carrier of international phone calls. This is not a big deal because AT&T's old Long Lines service has been a decreasing revenue stream for years. Now they are faced with the same thing happening on their wireless phone services. Within the next five years, the wireless companies will be all data services. With this context, it is easy to see why they are looking at metering wireless data. It is their solution to decreasing voice phone revenues.
What do you think?
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