At the WebRTC Conference & Expo, Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis hosted the panel “Delivering WebRTC in Service Providers, OTT, and Websites.” Speaking on the panel were Geoff Hollingworth of Ericsson, Boris Selitser of Oracle, and Alexey Aylarov of Zingaya. Together, they spoke of WebRTC and its potential in the industry.
Within the industry, WebRTC is causing a paradigm shift. In fact, part of the reason some companies are interested in it is due to its potential for disruption; it’s part of a larger transformation in the communications industry, and as a result, will have quite the fallout on the supplier landscape.
Communication is going into everything now, and WebRTC is to thank for that. It adds a new element into the business model for the Web, which service providers and websites must account for. Whether it becomes a service, a feature, or anything else, it is slowly but surely becoming more of a necessity.
So, this raises an important question: how will service providers react to OTT (over the top) carriers using and offering WebRTC? According to the panel, it is likely that service providers will react defensively. This could be done through charging certain services, or trying to block them outright, but OTTs offering WebRTC can pose a threat to traditional service providers, so they are expected to fight back.
A question posed to the panelists was the state of IMS in a WebRTC environment. Like the old man in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” IMS is “not dead yet,” but whether it gets better and transforms to keep up with WebRTC or if it’ll be cold dead in a moment has yet to be seen. WebRTC offers a cost effective alternative to IMS, which makes IMS less relevant, but it still has time to compete and reinvent itself before we can toss it in the cart.
No matter how the service providers, OTTs, and websites react and use WebRTC, there’s no denying that it can, will, and is changing the game. The ability to add real time communications to all sorts of websites and services creates many new opportunities and potentials, and those with the innovation and desire will take them. As this panel showed, WebRTC is causing a stir that we’ll be seeing play out for a while to come.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
