But now the Cyprus-headquartered startup has taken things to a whole new level with its Viber 3 version: it’s released a desktop app for OS X and Windows, making it a full-blown alternative for Skype’s core user base. At the same time, Viber has also beefed up its Android and iOS apps, while introducing support for eight new languages (reaching a total of 27).

“Viber for desktop lets you do pretty much everything that Viber lets you do on your mobile phone, with minor exceptions such as stickers,” Viber CEO Talmon Marco explained to me. “What puts it apart from Skype is how tightly integrated it is with the mobile experience. Skype went from the desktop to the phone. Viber went from mobile to desktop — the implication for the user is amazing.”

Hello desktop

“Amazing” might be a tad hyperbolic, but Viber’s cross-platform integration is genuinely impressive.

As someone who has a greater variety of smartphones and tablets than most (hey, it’s my job), I can attest to one of Skype’s most annoying quirks – its inability to recognize on one device that I’ve already read the day’s messages on another device. This isn’t an issue with Viber.

“Another annoying thing is my wife always complained that would leave Skype running on my computer at home and every message I exchanged with somebody [while on another computer] would beep,” Marco said. “Viber doesn’t – when you get a message, it beeps at both places. Depending on where you answer the message, the next messages only beep on that device.”

Small things, but useful. A far more major advantage is the ability to quickly and simply transfer calls between devices and network types. So you want to start a call on your home desktop, then pop it over to your Wi-Fi connected smartphone, then maintain the call as you leave the house and move onto a cellular network? It should work.

Ironically, I find this all a bit reminiscent of Telefonica’s Tu Go play, which extends the functionality of that carrier’s phone number-linked mobile services to the desktop. Marco doesn’t see Viber as being in direct competition with the cellular giant’s “over-the-top” app but, as the lines between traditional and new-style messaging functionality continue to blur, I think the similarities between the two are worth calling out.

After all, both essentially extend the same services across both mobile and desktop platforms while using the mobile phone number as the key to the user’s identity. When Tu Go came out, it struck me that this number was one of the carrier’s most underappreciated weapons in the fight against third-party communications services – now that Viber’s also exploiting it on the desktop, though, I’m not so sure.

The desktop Viber app also allows video calls, in the style of Skype and Google+. This isn’t available for the mobile apps just yet, though – it will be, Marco promised – and it also doesn’t allow group videoconferencing at this point.

Mobile revamp

Viber’s announcements today aren’t all about the desktop. For one thing, we now have the full new version for BlackBerry, which – as we reported last month — finally includes VoIP functionality. This makes Viber the first mass-market VoIP provider to offer such a feature on the platform.

However, as we noted when covering the beta, it’s only available for versions 5 and 7 of the platform. According to Marco, this is because Viber has to implement IP-based voice on BlackBerry in a slightly roundabout way (“pretty much recording and playing back”), which makes latency a serious issue on BlackBerry OS 6, but less so on 5 and 7. Even on the supported versions, “users should manually set the APN settings to do 3G – there’s no way around that,” he warned.

Users on iOS will find their updated app now includes video messaging capabilities: previously, you could send photos and locations, but not videos. “Last online” status has also been introduced, bringing Viber in line with WhatsApp on that front – Marco admitted that he himself wasn’t sure how useful this would be, given Viber’s push notifications, but “it’s there.”

Other tweaks on iOS include the ability to search contacts specifically for groups, rather than having to scroll through individual contacts to find them, and the introduction of a new voice engine “that provides better performance on low bandwidth or in poor network conditions.” The aforementioned ability to roam between Wi-Fi and 3G coverage is also a new feature, and the overall app design has evolved.

The Android version gets the same features as the iOS app, but also a hefty redesign. It previously looked very much like the iOS version but is now all Holo — as Marco put it, “the iOS version looks iOS and the Android version looks Android.”

Next trick

Viber now has 200 million users, Marco said. This is the same number WhatsApp announced less than a month ago, but it’s important to note that WhatsApp’s 200 million users are active on the service at least once a month, while Viber is only talking about the number of its registered users. That said, Marco claimed that the majority of those users did use the service last month.

Given the fact that Viber VoIP calls only sometimes use Skype-esque peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, often going through Viber’s servers instead, this means the company has to spend a lot of money on servers – “We’re probably one of the largest users of Amazon Web Services,” Marco said, while conceding that his firm is still generating zero revenue.

So when is Viber going to start monetizing its service, then? This year, apparently. According to Marco, the company will start selling stickers to its users, along with other, as-yet-undefined “value adds.”

How about an enterprise play? After all, the addition of the desktop app makes Viber an increasingly credible unified communications service. “We have nothing to announce at this point in time, but we think that the desktop offering gets us closer to this,” Marco said.

Whatever happens, there’s no question that 2013 will be a very exciting year for the rapidly evolving Viber.

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From the Washington Post article:

“What Aereo is doing to bring broadcast signals to its customers is interesting,” Time Warner Cable chief executive Glenn Britt said in an interview with The Washington Post. “If it is found legal, we could conceivably use similar technology.”

That’s a big admission from Britt, and illustrates both how rapidly the internet is changing the television industry. But what would be an even bigger admission would be if Britt would consider delivering that public broadcast package beyond its existing subscriber base.

A modest proposal

In short, would Britt be willing to break the unspoken agreement that has kept the telcos and cable providers from infringing on each other’s turfs even as IP technology has made it possible for them to deliver their TV packages over the top?

If Time Warner Cable were to implement an Aereo-like business model and offer it to anyone, it might hurt Aereo but it would set off a war between the telcos and cable companies to deliver their services over the top. In many cases, the technology isn’t stopping this revolution, but the business implications would give them pause.

If Comcast’s Xfinity service were available everywhere and so were Verizon’s FiOS packages, then pay TV will have been decoupled from the entwork. All you would be left with are dumb pipes and whole lot of companies offering to provide the same channels of television. Would we need 20 “premium cable offerings?”

My hunch is no, which would have trickle down effects on the money the networks make as well as hasten the rise of a la carte pay TV packages, or even simply paying for a show. However, all of this speculation is premature as Britt cushioned his statements by telling the Washington Post that his company is only watching Aereo’s legal battle and that it doesn’t have concrete plans.

Taking action on this sort of talk would hugely piss off the broadcasters that own some of the channels that Time Warner Cable depends on to keep its subscribers happy, and may just be a feint in the ongoing fight between cable providers and content companies about retransmission fees.

Back in the real world

But Britt is clearly a fan of shaking things up. Unlike many ISPs that view Netflix as a threat to their triple play bundle, Time Warner Cable sends out advertisements touting Netflix as a reason to upgrade broadband speeds. He’s also letting consumers stream live TV to their Roku boxes with a Time Warner Subscription (that might come in handy should it elect to make an Aereo-style over the top offering). And he’s also been more vocal about the need for more flexible packages of channels for consumers.

He reiterated that to the Washington Post:

“The structure needs more flexibility,” Britt said. A customer shouldn’t have to pay for less popular channels like VH1 Honors in order to get Nick Jr. and MTV. “There are fellow citizens who are struggling financially and can’t afford large programming packages. We want the ability to offer those customers smaller, more affordable packages.”

It’s better to keep a customer paying you something, rather than decamping because they don’t want to pay for a $150 cable bill. Britt seems to get that, and wants to find a middle ground before the internet and over the top TV offerings take that ground out from under his feet. I wonder if he’s willing to take it even further.

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That strategy met with only limited success, so last year Skype was able to confidently team up with the mobile billing company Mach on direct operator billing for Skype Credit. And now it’s here, starting in Russia: as of today, Skype users in that country can pay for credit through their normal mobile phone bill or pre-paid account balance.

According to a Mach spokeswoman, the same opportunity will be extended to Skype users in the U.S. and Canada later this month, and other countries will follow. Mach, which provides a billing gateway, has direct agreements with carriers in Canada and Russia. In the U.S. it is partnering up with Payvia, which has similar arrangements there.

“As well as our existing users benefiting from this new payment option, we expect direct operator billing to attract new customers who are looking for more convenient ways to manage their spend,” Skype payments chief Jason Macklin said in a statement.

No carriers are being quoted by name, but “leading mobile operators” are apparently playing ball. Mach lists Orange, Telefonica, T-Mobile, Telus and Verizon Wireless as customers.

It should go without saying that the operators will get a cut of the Skype Credit purchases, although how much they get seems to be a tightly-guarded secret. The credit will cost the same as if it was purchased through more traditional means.

For Skype, it potentially means more reach. For the carriers, it means they get some kind of revenue stream beyond data usage (which is usually flat-rate these days) out of the ‘over-the-top’ technology that’s so disrupted their core business. It may just be that everyone’s a winner here.

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The deal, announced Monday, will give Netflix the right to distribute the West Wing but also the post-apocalyptic drama “Revolution” which has been the most popular new series for the 2012-2013 TV season. Netflix also gets previous seasons of: Chuck; Political Animals; Fringe; Longmire; 666 Park Avenue.

The deal is good news — sort of — for Netflix at a time when it is struggling to replenish its video offerings after many of its initial content deals have expired. The Warner Bros deal makes Netflix “the exclusive online home” for those shows from the 2012-2013 season but this language appears to allow the studio to distribute the shows on other platforms like cable or broadcast.

Meanwhile, Time Warner (Warner Bros parent company) continues to pursue strategies that keep other goodies from Netflix. This week, for instance, it locked up a deal for HBO to have exclusive distribution rights to content from Universal Studios such as “Ted” or “Bourne Legacy.” The deal gives HBO, which Time Warner owns, more popular third party content in addition to its original series like”Game of Thrones.”

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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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According to the IP Carrier blog, TeliaSonera’s Chief Executive Lars Nyberg is concerned about the risk VoIP calls brings to traditional telecom revenues, saying ”If all our customers suddenly decided to switch over to VoIP, and we charged them only for the data traffic usage, we would lose about 70 percent of our revenue.”

The initial move to charge extra for VoIP was met with understandable consumer disappointment, with some suggesting that Skype would effectively be blocked in Sweden on mobiles for those not paying the extra fee. This situation in general is likely to only worsen as carriers lose revenues to OTT, or over the top, third-party services that replicate or expand upon what network operators offer. Might you one day pay for data based on the app that uses it? Quite possibly, but for now, at least one operator has backed down a little.

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There’s some debate over whether Metro was the first global operator to get to VoLTE. Both SK Telecom and Uplus kicked off VoLTE in Korea on Wednesday, which due to time zones differences was Tuesday in the US. But there’s no doubt that what MetroPCS has accomplished is a milestone for a US mobile industry that has routed its calls over circuit switches since its inception.

The question now is who’s next? MetroPCS had a fire burning under its rear, which drove it to move everything it could to IP as quickly as possible. MetroPCS uses the same spectrum for both its 2G CDMA and 4G LTE networks. That meant every megahertz it devoted to supporting old-school circuit-switched calls was one less megahertz it could use to bolster its much more spectrally efficient LTE network.

Leap Wireless faces a similar issue, but it’s been far less aggressive with LTE and has a 3G network to pick up the data slack. Meanwhile, the big operators are deploying their LTE networks over largely untouched airwaves, so they face far less pressure to recycle their old spectrum.

That doesn’t mean, though, they’re not feeling some pressure. By using VoIP, voice no longer becomes a siloed service. Carriers can overlay a voice call with other IP services such as video chat, multimedia sharing and presence. Called Rich Communications Suite (RCS), this communications layer is the operators’ answer to the over-the-top services that are eating away at their voice and SMS revenues. Let’s take a look at each carrier’s stated plans and unstated motivations, one by one:

Verizon: Big Red may very well be the first Tier I carrier to move to VoIP, not because it needs to, but simply because it can. By year end Verizon will have an LTE footprint covering 230 million people, meaning its customers will be able to receive a 4G signal in most populated areas of the country.

Verizon has already said it plans to launch its first VoIP-powered LTE phones this year, but unlike Metro it’s facing no pressure to shut down to its CDMA networks and harvest their spectrum. Instead Verizon will focus on enhanced VoIP services targeting enterprise customers. According to CTO Tony Melone, in 2013 Verizon’s network will be so widespread it will be able to sell its first phones without CDMA chips.

AT&T:Ma Bell’s LTE network may not be as extensive as its Verizon’s but it has a technical advantage its archrival can’t claim. As a GSM operator, AT&T can take advantage of circuit-switched fallback, a standard that allows IP calls to revert to circuit-switched calls when customers leave the LTE network. For Verizon, venturing out from under the LTE umbrella means a dropped call (MetroPCS has the same problem).

AT&T has stated it will offer a VoIP-based service in 2013, but AT&T can launch VoLTE anytime it pleases without worrying about whether it has nationwide, or even citywide, coverage. Customers won’t be able to take their enhanced IP services with them onto the 2G and 3G networks, but at least their voice conversations will accompany them.

In an SEC filing last week, AT&T said it plans to sunset its 2G GSM network in five years – a process it has already started in New York. But even with its primary voice network scheduled for retirement, AT&T isn’t facing any increased pressure to move to VoLTE. AT&T’s 3G networks support voice as well.

Sprint: The country’s No. 3 operator also plans to have VoLTE online in 2013, though it’s actually already running a 2G and 3G VoIP service today in the from of Sprint Direct Connect push-to-talk. Sprint’s LTE network only went live last month so it has a long expansion road ahead before it seriously considers VoLTE. But of all the major carriers it has the most incentive to move voice to its IP networks. Like MetroPCS Sprint is using the same band, PCS, for its 4G, 3G and 2G networks. The faster it gets to VoLTE the sooner it can start shutting down CDMA and refarm that spectrum for LTE.

T-Mobile: T-Mobile is still a year away from launching LTE so you would think it VoLTE would be the last thing on its mind. But T-Mobile is also a very crafty carrier that has shown it can use technology to overcome its limited resources. T-Mobile is deploying LTE on the same band it uses for its HSPA+ network, which after its system-wide reconfiguration will become its primary voice network. If it aggressively pursues VoIP when it launches, it could start shifting its Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum from HSPA+ to LTE, which would in turn clear up more room for LTE.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Shawn Hempel

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