What About Mobile Phones?
Interestingly, the mobile phone industry already completed the process of switching to digital with the last analog Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) call being made in the mid-2000’s. But this was only the first wave of digital mobile calling. With 4G coverage quickly making its way to worldwide availability, using VoIP applications on smartphones already has a long history and has been adopted by small service providers as a main transport technology. Verizon’s VoLTE (VoIP over LTE) also uses this kind of arrangement. Users of Apple’s popular iPad™ often use VoIP applications with their Internet-enabled devices. All in all, the mobile industry will likely make the switch as well, especially considering the IP-address-as-phone-number experimentation taking place now.
References
- “Virtual Private Network” from Wikipedia
- “Digitizing” from Wikipedia
- “IP PBX” from Wikipedia
- “Advanced Mobile Phone System” from Wikipedia
- “4G” from Wikipedia
- “Voice Over LTE (VoLTE)” from Wikipedia
- “US Phone Companies to Explore Replacing All Phone Numbers With IP Addresses” from Engadget