An excellent article describing current status-quo of operators:
Does anyone working for operator have statistics about how much OTT (Skype, Whatsapp, Faacebook,Viber etc) have increased compared to VoLTE increase over years?
I am sure OTTs are way ahead of VoLTE, teenagers they all use OTT.
In 10-15 years we can kiss good-bye the IMS constellation as all traffic will be moved to OTTs.
Native dailer stiil has a precedence.
I left my position at operator nearly one year ago.
I can say IMS even CS voice will stand for a long time.
Will be interesting to see.
Anyone please share if any statistics available till now.
Operators where voice over OTTs are blocked will give a different picture.
Absolutely. They are doing a great disservice to their countrymen.
OTTs are blocked in GCC, protecting the revenue of cellular operators.
This protection is not a disservice just to the people living in those countries. Its a disservice to the cellular operators as well, because such protectionism doesnt force them to be innovative in their service offerings.
Cellular operators of 2030 will be v different from that of today, in countries where OTT is eating revenue.
These cellular operators will need to revisit their business models and offer something new: the best of the operators will survive.
Once those new models and services get developed in USA or Germany or Australia, GCC operators will copy paste them.
They will live happily ever after.
Countries like in Iran OTTs are completely blocked with no access to OTT based voice calls.
Instead VPNs are used to utilized these services.
Yes. And its prolonging the life and delaying the death of cellular operators.
Adversity is the mother of all inventions.
OTTs will be used if a drop call doesn’t matters, because it will have bad QoS.
It willl be done throughout QCI9.
VoLTE or CS call has real time QoS so less call drop and audio gaps.
OTTs have simply converted cellular services as pipes.
I remember while beinn in Malaysia, I used to spend only a few dollars per month to buy 4G subscription: I literally used to make zero legacy calls. Even if I had to call Uber or Grab driver, I would make him/her a whatsapp call.
It was very challenging ARPU for the operators in Malaysia.
But then, the best operators will shift to new services.
In Africa, I read cellular operators allow people to transfer bitcoin by using VAS via SMS.
Like if I need to send bitcoin to someone and I do not have access to internet, I just send a predefined code via sms.
Sending money via SMS is a massive innovation and a big game changer.
Imagine mobile handsets becoming bitcoin wallets, which do not require internet access for transferring money across the country.
If cellular operators charge only 0.1% of the money transferred, it can lead to massive hike in ARPU for the operators.
Since everyone gets KYCed while buying SIM, there’s no threat of illicit use of money transfer.
Now, lets try to think big: lets suppose these cellular operators host a ‘work marketplace’… something like Upwork or Fiverr.
You apply to those jobs in the platforms which are hosted by the operator. The buyer and seller of these services pay via sms.
Upwork and such platforms make billions of dollars a year, just by charging commissions.
I mean to say, these cellular operators will need to venture into new ideas: explore new, wild, crazy and stupid ideas.
Those who experiment, they will survive.
The rest will become Nortel, Lucent and Alcatel
Cellular operators can also host P2P markets for bitcoin: like if someone needs Naira against bitcoin, and someone else wants to buy bitcoin against Naira, they could do so by broadcasting SMS.
The operator matches the buyer with the best offer with the seller with the best ask.
Everything happens over SMS, and in the end the buyer gets bitcoin and seller gets Naira which he can get from nearest cellular operator franchise.
I agree with you that VoLTE is GBR while OTT is non GBR yet OTTS improved codecs so much that POLQA is same like VoLTE unless congestion.
In Europe in Romania everything is unlimited. Including international minutes !!! for 5 Euro / month.
Even data roaming in UE is less than 1 Euro / GB of data.
Very convenient.
Very Cheap…!! and affordable.
But my question is where can I find how many minutes were spent on OTTs and VoLTE.
Operators have this info but they do not share easily…
I am not sure about this, we can talk again about this 10 years from now 
Let’s see stats first.
Have a look at impressive whatsapp stats:
Over 100 billion WhatsApp messages are sent and over two billion minutes are spent on WhatsApp voice and video calls per day
When any one can call 112 / 911 over whatsapp, than we talk 
The system will well exist, question is who will use it 10 years from now.
Operators cannot innovate over IMS.
There is no chance to send a file, to upload a picture, to receive one, to switch to video etc IMS is more than 10 years old.
And started with a very low profile on development.
As you see, countries like Japan and US do not use whatsapp much.
But that is because they use Viber / Line (Japan) or Facetime (Apple US).
It is possible over IMS data channel.
And also Apple decision on RCS is also a key progress.
I am speaking about average John Doe with his smartpphone.
Who has no experience to run scripts or configure smartphone for this.
NG911 expand emergency contact to IP (messaging, social media) and SMS vs. voice only E911.
