Hangouts has taken the place of Google Talk, which is what I use daily to make phone calls via Google Voice. Or at least I used to.

At the moment, users who upgrade to Hangouts on the web lose the ability to make voice calls through the old Google Talk. Incoming Google Voice calls can still be accepted through the new Hangouts, however. It turns out that Google Voice actually is a big part of Hangouts, it’s just not ready yet. Nikhyl Singhal, a product manager for all of Google’s real-time communications services said this on his Google+ page on Monday:

“Hangouts is designed to be the future of Google Voice, and making/receiving phone calls is just the beginning. Future versions of Hangouts will integrate Google Voice more seamlessly.”

Singhal notes that from within Gmail, users can still place outbound Google Voice phone calls, so the functionality is still available; just not yet in the new Hangouts app or the Chrome extension for Hangouts.

On a related note, Hangouts still doesn’t use the open source WebRTC, or Web real-time communications, API that will allow for video, voice and file sharing without the need for plug-ins. Instead, the service is still built upon technology from Vidyo, which clarified the WebRTC situation in a blog post today. Google has confirmed the same to my colleague, Janko Roettgers.

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Community Manager for Hangouts and Chat, Dori Storbeck, confirmed in a Google+ thread that SMS support is “coming soon” and is one of the most requested features. The Verge also noted that the new Google Play Services supports SMS, likely to receive or send game play requests to other users.

After installing the new Hangouts app for iOS and also using the service on my Chromebook Pixel, bringing Chat, Talk and Hangout features all together is a welcome experience. And one that’s long overdue as Google has had several overlapping message services not long after Android arrived on the scene. Oddly, at least to me, is that Google Voice hasn’t been talked about in any of the message unification efforts.

This addition of SMS for Hangouts, which makes sense, is what has me wondering where Google Voice fits in to Google’s grand plans. Since it’s not a true VoIP service, maybe its outside the technical bounds of Hangouts. But traditional SMS is handled by cellular networks and it’s clearly in the scope of Hangouts if it’s coming soon. As a result, Google Voice still feels like the unloved child in Google’s family of services.

I actually use Google Voice to make calls through my computer when working, which essentially are VoIP calls, at least for part of the transmission; the calls originate on my Chromebook over Wi-Fi or LTE. I do this through what used to be Google Talk — there’s a phone icon to place the call.

Perhaps Google is simply leaving well enough alone with Google Voice until data networks mature further and voice over LTE takes root. For now, however, the service just seems left behind while all other Google messaging features are growing up.

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However, with Facebook’s recent addition of voice calling to its Messenger app, the company is poised to demonstrate to the mobile industry the benefits – and power – of scale, first hand. And in what can only be described as the perfect murder, Facebook is now in a position to effectively kill the traditional telephone, starting with the phone number.

How it could work

The implementation of Facebook’s voice features are straightforward yet unique: You make a call by tapping a name, not a number, a username, or any other type of identifier. You’re calling a social connection. That in itself is not shocking, but Facebook can go even further. Its database already contains the phone number of tens of millions of people. (For fun, just type a friend’s phone number in the Facebook search bar, and you’ll likely see their profile pop up instantly.)

This means it could offer streamlined interoperability with existing phone networks in a way that a company like Skype, Viber, Whatsapp — or smaller voice calling startups — can’t so easily manage. Further, all the pages you “like” on Facebook have numbers connected to them, so calling a business is just as simple and at-hand as calling a friend. In the near future then, you will call a business via Facebook on the basis of a friend’s request or a like. No more unwanted calls. No more Yellow Pages. No more looking up a phone number you can’t remember. Just a connection.

What of the gatekeepers?

The real question is how existing gatekeepers of the mobile industry – namely phone carriers and manufacturers – will respond to this apparent threat to their apparent core business. The first, familiar route is to stick to their guns. Put up a blockade, offer low-level crippled integration, or just try to ignore it and hope it just goes away.

Or, they could embrace the disruption with open arms. Carriers need to realize that as the unlimited plan dies, there’s huge opportunity in sending more and more communication over a pay-per-use data line. (They just need to bill their customers in a transparent way.)

This second option would also include supporting Facebook’s interoperability with normal phone numbers. That means you’d be able to call grandma via Facebook whether or not she even has a Facebook account (or even knows what it is) – her old landline will ring just as easily. And when grandma calls you, your Facebook app picks up the call, using number forwarding that’s comparable to Google Voice.

Manufacturers could offer Facebook deeper integration as well. Currently VoIP calls on your iPhone don’t feel like a normal phone call, but they could if Apple were to allow Facebook to control or mimic the iPhone’s Phone app. (While that might sound impossible, don’t forget that Facebook is already integrated in the Contacts app – it is already on the iOS platform in a major way.) And Android is already giving Skype and other VoIP apps ways to generate an incoming call on a phone without sending an often overlooked push notification. Apple can go this route as well.

And now, the future

It’s safe to assume that Facebook is deep in talks already with operators and manufacturers to create a partnership that benefits all of them. To date though, even major VoIP companies like Skype have been unsuccessful in pulling this off. Facebook has a scale that even Skype needed at one point to reach enough people for VoIP calling to become ubiquitous. It won’t stop with this recent addition to the Messenger app. There’s too much for the company to win. (Yes, that includes blocking competitors.)

That Facebook phone you keep hearing about? I believe it’s an app. Sure, it could pull a Google Chrome and try and completely replace a broken platform with its own, but it doesn’t need to – its scale forces partners to listen. Facebook can kill the phone as we know it simply by rebuilding it as an app. It can completely replace Messenger, and it won’t have the voice call option as hidden as it is right now.

It will allow you to communicate through text, voice, and ultimately even video chat. It will use data, lots of it, and carriers might even learn to enjoy billing you for that on a pay-per-use basis. It will work over Wi-Fi too, which will come in handy as 4G LTE networks become more widespread. It will improve the quality of your call in the same way the CD improved the quality of your record collection.

And, by using a huge database of phone numbers, it will even let you call keep in touch with anyone stuck using that dated technology. “Grandma? This is Robert! I’m calling you on Facebook. No, it’s not a phone… .”

Disclosure: One of Karma’s minority investors is currently employed by Facebook, as a designer for products unrelated to this story.

Robert Gaal is co-founder of mobile data startup Karma. Follow him on Twitter @robertgaal. 

Photo courtesy of bluefish/Shutterstock.com.

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The four waves of revenue

Telecom analyst Chetan Sharma says that the telecom industry has been through three distinct revenue waves in its history. First there was the voice wave, then messaging and finally data.

Both the first and second of these waves produced phenomenal profits for decades but now are in serious decline due to market saturation and the rise of consumer-friendly OTT alternatives. While many in the industry see the third wave as being a replacement cash cow, others believe operators must look beyond data revenue to the fourth wave: OTT and Value Added Services (VAS).

Having become accustomed to diets of “all you can eat” data bundles, consumers naturally expect the price of data to drop over time, not rise. If operators bump up data costs, we can assume consumers will respond by flocking to services like Freedom Pop, which relies on Wi-Fi as the main source of data, switching only to cellular data when Wi-Fi is unavailable.  So while data will undoubtedly continue to be a major part of operators’ revenue, there is only so much cash they can directly extract from it. And more importantly it’s highly unlikely that that revenue will ever compensate for those lost from the decline in voice and text use.

The fourth wave is already building rapidly, as people are now using their mobiles to do everything from paying their grocery bills and online shopping to downloading digital media or even checking their medical records. Virtually all of these services are provided not by operators but by third parties. This has understandably rattled most operators’ cages. Many have panicked and gone so far as to throttle their users’ service in response – or even completely blocked them from using services such as Skype (and later defending their moves citing policies hidden deep in the terms and conditions of consumers’ contracts).

Industry discovers benefit of OTTs

In January 2012, the Internet Telephony Services Providers’ Association in the UK condemned mobile operators Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange for their use of such anti-consumer practices, leading European Commissioner, Neelie Kroes, to call for greater transparency. And since then tide in Europe slowly seems to be changing.

In September Swedish operator Telia not only backed down on plans to charge customers extra for using VoIP services, but even introduced special VoIP packages themselves. Such a move is an implicit acknowledgment of how operators must embrace progressive technological change and the desires of their customers, instead of trying to thwart them.

Indeed, more operators are continuing to accept this view and have begun the process of working with OTT services. Weeks ago Deutsche Telecom teamed up with online music provider Spotify to give users the option to choose a payment bundle with unlimited music streaming– even going so far as to not deduct usage from the user’s data allowance. Crucially, such deals not only enhance an operator’s offering to customers, but instantly transform the OTT service from being a competitive threat or parasite to a valued business partner.

These types of partnerships are not unheard of, of course. Examples include, with varying degrees of success, Vodafone and Three working with Skype in the UK; or AT&T combining with Twilio; and Sprint working with Google Voice. The problem has been that many such OTT acquisitions or partnerships from previous years have often felt reactive rather than a proactive from operators. A high failure rate in such partnerships often confirmed this suspicion. When such partnerships are run effectively however everyone benefits: Consumers get more choice, operators have more to offer and OTT services get to monetize their software.

Recent months have also seen a surge in news relating to operators partnering with established companies from other industries. AT&T recently teamed up with computer giant IBM to offer cloud-computing resources to Fortune 1000 companies. A potentially hugely profitable venture.

Elsewhere, Telefonica set up a new division within its company to analyse and then resell user tracking location data, mining and monetising the huge amounts of real-time consumer data already available to them.

It’s do or die time

OTT services are not a passing fad – to the contrary they have become so significant as to be a legitimate fourth wave of revenue for the telecom industry. Operators then must seek to partner with (or compete with) OTT services, and monetize those efforts. Failure to do so will inevitably lead to ceding their turf, consigning them to be nothing more than data carriers.

To preserve their market position, operators need to be among the vanguard setting new industry trends, to be more flexible so they may respond quicker to market demands. And they must look for opportunities to form intelligent partnerships with relevant technology companies.

Operators are standing at a critical crossroad.  They need to not only choose their path, but whom to walk it with.

Andreas Bernström is CEO of Stockholm-based Rebtel.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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From Google’s blog post, here’s how the new groups can be used:

• People in your address book: this allows you to customize the experience of all contacts in your address book. This also works by exclusion. For example, you can set a special greeting just for people in your address book, or screen anyone not in your address book.
• For anonymous callers: these are callers who do not have a caller ID. They sometimes appear as unknown, or restricted, depending on why the caller’s number is not shown. You can use this group to for example screen any call without a caller ID.

As a daily Google Voice user, I can tell you these are welcome additions. My phones ring day in and day out for story and product pitches and while I do have many PR contacts in my address book, many of my calls are from unrecognized numbers. With each new feature, Google Voice becomes more of a personal communications platform, not simply a voice calling app with some whiz-bang features.

Google says you can manage these groups from within a browser pointed at your Google Voice account page, so don’t look to manage actions for these groups in one of the Google Voice mobile apps. At least not yet. But you can customize actions for these groups in a mobile browser. I tested it in Google Chrome for Android and once I switched to the Desktop View, it wasn’t a problem to access these controls.

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From the Google Mobile Blog:

Your voicemails will appear alongside your outgoing, incoming, and missed calls in your phone’s call log and you can just simply touch them to play them. You can slow down the playback of the message which is great for when someone is telling you their callback number, or you even speed playback up, so you can quickly listen to longer messages.

Although Google Voice is supported on multiple mobile platforms, it’s unlikely — if not impossible — that this type of integration will appear on iOS, Windows Mobile, or BlackBerry handsets. And for Google, that’s not a bad thing.

The company can keep integrating its products and services deeper into the Android platform, helping it to stand out from the crowd. While that sounds like an overrated benefit, some Android users are unwilling to leave the platform because of Google’s tight integration between its web services and Android handsets. Some have even stuck with Android mainly because of Google Voice, based on conversations I’ve had over the past year or two.

Bear in mind, however, that unless you have a stock Google Android 4.0 device, this feature may not work. That means devices with custom skins or reworked phone applications won’t be able to take advantage of the new feature. I’ve already seen one such report on Twitter, not long after news of the voicemail update broke.

Hope you weren't expecting to take advantage of the new Google Voice ICS integration on your HTC Vivid. Sense 3.6 doesn't support it.—
Dan Seifert (@dcseifert) March 22, 2012

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Ovum estimates operators lost $13.9 billion of potential SMS revenue in 2011 through subscribers using social messaging apps on their mobile phone, a loss in revenue that is both high margin and creates a virtuous cycle of use. When I sign up for a new social messaging service, I get my friends on it too, causing a loss in potential revenue that spreads virally. That’s how Viber, a social messaging service that was relatively unknown six months ago, can suddenly shoot up to consume 2 percent of mobile bandwidth six months later, according to data from Allot.

This morning I suggested that the challenge for carriers is finding a way to continue getting the same total dollars from subscribers while transitioning them to new services. Otherwise they might lose valuable dollars to IP-based voice and messaging services without making up the loss of voice and testing plan revenue. Ovum also pushes carriers to stop dithering and get on board with startups to offer their end users some sort of value that will keep some of that texting revenue in carrier pockets. Ovum suggests carriers focus on their ownership of the phone number:

“In addition, operators are in a position of strength because they control the entire messaging structure through their access to the user’s phone number and usage data. The established billing relationship is a great advantage, as is the fact that operators control to a great extent the services to which the user is exposed.”

I’m not 100 percent sure trying to pen users in using their phone number or creating extra hurdles to communications is the way to go, which seems to be an implication buried in Ovum’s idea. However, for widespread use, creating an easy on-ramp for less tech-savvy (or social) customers and allowing users to interconnect across services would be helpful and something that average consumers might pay for.

However, carriers who push too hard or erect too many barriers will likely see users resort, not just to giving up texting plans, but to a wholesale abandonment of their cell phone numbers. By using new services they can piece together their own IP-based communications using a device, some handy apps, and their mobile data plan.

My colleague Kevin Tofel does that right now, and while it takes a little effort today, there’s no reason a new service couldn’t come in and make it easier. By using a VoIP SIP provider and Google Voice, Kevin can receive phone calls and send texts over Wi-Fi or 3G networks at no per-minute cost, with his Galaxy Nexus. And he’s using a $30 a month data-only SIM card to do so, which eliminates all of the high-profit-margin revenues a carrier would normally earn through voice minutes and a texting plan.

Clearly, the non-techie population won’t take this route because it’s too complex for most people to bother. But if the carriers don’t begin to offer these types of services, or partner with those who do, they run the risk of third-party solutions that start to drain revenues from the network pipes.

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Last week, it took out of beta its One Number service, which allows customers to extend the voice and SMS capabilities or their phones to any PC under a single unified phone number. On Monday, it revealed that none other than CounterPath, the developer of the innovative over-the-top VoIP application Bria, was powering the service.

Rogers, however, isn’t simply re-branding the Bria Android and iPhone clients. It’s doing something far more sophisticated. It’s using the underlying Bria technology to power a web-based portal that can make and receive phone calls and send text messages to any Canadian number as well as video chat with other Rogers One Number users – all at no charge and with no penalty to a customer’s voice minute or SMS caps. It may sound a lot like Google Voice, but the magic is in hidden in the network. Rogers is integrating CounterPath’s technology into its next-generation service delivery architecture – which in telco jargon is known as IP Multimedia Subsystem, or IMS – creating a bridge between its legacy circuit-switched voice networks and CounterPath’s session initiation protocol (SIP)-based VoIP and video services platform.

The result isn’t a semi-isolated web service like Google Voice, but one that makes PC calling an extension of Rogers’ ordinary mobile voice services. Customers can transfer calls mid-conversation between their phones and PCs and vice versa. IMS negotiates the tricky hand-off between circuit-switched and SIP-based calls in the heart of the network. And once a call migrates to the PC, Rogers no longer counts it against a customer’s monthly minute allotment. Rogers posted a video that provides a basic outline and demo of One Number’s capabilities:

Rogers isn’t the first operator to pal up with an over-the-top voice provider. Verizon Wireless shocked the industry by announcing a partnership with Skype in 2010. But that deal was more about giving preferential treatment to – and presumably creating a revenue-sharing agreement  with — a particular VoIP provider, not directly integrating Verizon’s phone numbers into the Skype service. Many operators also have experimented with call forwarding and simultaneous ring services bridging their wireless and wireline voice services.

But Rogers is going much further. It’s divorcing the mobile phone number from the mobile phone, making it just another IP service that can be carried across networks, applications and platforms. It will be interesting to see how far Rogers expands One Number. Tablets and connected TVs seem like the logical next step, but it’s not hard to imagine Rogers tapping into other Internet companies’ APIs to stick its ‘mobile’ service into anything with a user interface. Free calling from your Facebook account may be just around the corner.

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To get started, you need to pair your headset with your iPad. In the Settings app, navigate to “General” and select “Bluetooth.” Make sure that Bluetooth is turned on, and at that point initiate your headset’s pairing mode. With the Jawbone ERA, you perform what is referred to as a “Double ShakeShake” to activate the pairing mode (a single “ShakeShake” is two quick successive shakes of the device), but you other headsets use different methods, like a long press of the power button. Once paired, you’re ready to use your headset with almost any audio app on the iPad. Here are four popular choices:

FaceTime. This was the first app I tried out and it worked perfectly on the first attempt.  The Bluetooth headset is treaded similar to  AirPlay devices, in the sources list. The only issue is that I noticed that I could not do was answer and hang up the call with the controls on the headset.

Skype. With Skype, the Bluetooth headset once connected will be enabled by default. Call quality was good on both ends in test calls. The added advantage of using Skype over FaceTime is that you have access to all of your Skype contacts, and you can place traditional ‘land line’ calls to any plain old telephone number if you have a paid account.

Google Voice (via Talkatone). With Talkatone, you can make calls using your Google Voice account and the Bluetooth headset worked like a charm.You can also use Google Voice to place calls to any traditional phone number. The difference here is that you can’t make video calls.

Unfortunately, you can’t answer calls with a Bluetooth headset using any of the apps above, even when they can receive calls running in background mode. Still, it definitely beats holding your iPad to your ear or always using speakerphone mode when talking to people through iPad voice and video chat apps.

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However, the Note is already on sale in some European regions. Steve Paine, a blogger who shares my love for the now-defunct 7-inch Ultra Mobile PCs, spent three hours with a Galaxy Note and shared his thoughts. Based on my interpretation, it sounds like mainstream consumers won’t be interested in a smartphone this large, but long-time tablet and small form-factor PC users are sure to be intrigued:

What an excellent bit of kit the Samsung Galaxy Note is and it’s the best converged phone/mid/tablet that I’ve ever tested. When Ice Cream Sandwich comes along, it gets even better! I wasn’t a big fan of converged phone/tablet products before this hands-on with the Samsung Galaxy Note and although I still think it’s risky (and battery-draining) to put all your eggs in one basket, I’d certainly be happy to take a Galaxy Note and to hand over my Nokia N8 and Galaxy Tab. I’d miss the N8’s camera for sure and wouldn’t find the Note as comfortable to type on, but I think I’d get over it, especially as I’d be getting a phone and a tablet for around €520. ($707.15 USD)

Paine hits the key point in his final summary sentence. I can relate, because I often travel locally with just a 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab; with its 3G connection, I have voice calls routed to the tablet via Google Voice and Skype. Essentially, it’s a large phone that I use primarily as a tablet. Interestingly, several fellow Galaxy Tab owners I know that live in Europe do the same; they use the device as their phone. Of course, it’s easier for them to do this because the European carriers didn’t strip out the voice functionality from the tablet.

Whether a tablet is 7-inches in size, or is 5.3-inches like the Note, you don’t want to be holding the device up to your head. (Trust me!) Between hands free conversations and wired or wireless headsets, however, taking phone calls is no more difficult than using a traditional smartphone.

I’m not sure 5.3 inches is the perfect compromise size for a cross between a phone and a tablet, but I do believe that over time, more people will seek the benefits brought by a larger display for the tasks they do the most. Voice simply isn’t one of them, as it has already become a secondary feature on handsets for more than half of all smartphone owners.

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