Huawei may be best known by consumers for its smartphones, but it is also a successful information and communication technology (ICT) solutions provider. As such, it was only a matter of time before the company threw its hat into the WebRTC ring, which it did earlier this week with the unveiling of the industry's first WebRTC-based rich communications capability exposure gateway.
The most touted feature of this gateway is its RCS service enablement, which bridges the Web with telecommunications networks. Huawei's demonstration showed how the rich communications capability exposure gateway could integrate WebRTC with RCS capabilities to improve the accident processing efficiency of a car insurance company, while providing superior service to end users.
In other words, Huawei's gateway makes the capabilities of RCS available to third parties via the Web. Indeed, this JavaScript-based, high service abstraction and encapsulation interface allows any developer to create real-time communications enabled applications without the need for any telecommunications expertise.
Huawei was adamant, however, that its WebRTC gateway isn't restricted to interworking between WebRTC users and legacy telecom users, or to basic voice and video capabilities. As part of the company's communication as a service (CaaS) lineup, its WebRTC gateway relies on the same three success factors as other products in the product group, namely: richness, offering greater service exposure than voice and video; compatibility, with full ICT interoperability support; and simplicity, made possible with its JavaScript-based interface.
This is where Huawei's WebRTC gateway differs from Mavenir's recently announced WebRTC Gateway, which also acts as a bridge between Web and mobile operator networks; Mavenir's gateway doesn't aim much further beyond bringing more basic voice and video services from the telecom realm into the Web and vice versa.
Still, Huawei's WebRTC gateway is still brand new, so more creative uses beyond enriching applications with the real-time communications capabilities of WebRTC quickly and easily have not yet been provided.
Edited by
Blaise McNamee
