As a provider of communications technology and services, it's no surprise that Ericsson has been keen to further WebRTC, which is being heralded as a major disruptive force in the world of communications. Indeed, the ability to place and receive real-time video and audio calls through a Web browser without the need for plug-ins can only change the way digital communications today are viewed - and ultimately affecting the way they operate.
While Mozilla and Google have stolen the majority of headlines relating to WebRTC, as their respective Firefox and Chrome browsers gaining support of the standard is a significant step toward its widespread use, Ericsson has also been hard at work innovating with WebRTC. For example, back in October, the company actually introduced the world's first WebRTC-enabled mobile browser, dubbed "Browser," beating both Mozilla and Google to the punch.
Bowser is an experimental project, however, and as such has not been made available to the general public, instead helping the Ericsson Research team to further WebRTC implementation on mobile platforms.
More recently, Ericsson teamed up with Mozilla and AT&T to develop a WebRTC solution that illustrates its possibilities in terms of seamless Web and mobile integration. The demonstration leveraged Ericsson's Web Communication Gateway, the Mozilla Social API and AT&T's API Platform, enabling Firefox to sync with a user's existing phone number and offering calling services through both the browser and a mobile device.
Specifically, the demonstration showed how Firefox was able to perform mobile functions — such as voice and video calls, as well as SMS and MMS texting — with the companies' joint technologies and WebRTC.
Ericsson will of course continue to further WebRTC one step at a time. In fact, Geoff Hollingworth, the company's head of business innovation, will deliver a keynote address at the upcoming WebRTC Conference and Expo, in June. Hollingworth's session will focus on WebRTC as the democratization of communication.
Edited by
Stefania Viscusi
