LIVE FROM BROADBAND WORLD FORUM 2014: Voice-over-WiFi technology is set to become commonplace, with momentum for the technology picking up worldwide, Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO of the WiFi Alliance, said yesterday.

“It’s been around for a while, but we are seeing a tremendous interest and announcements that it will be supported by a number of key operators around the world,” he said.

In recent weeks the technology has been backed by T-Mobile US and Apple in its latest generation iPhones, and other backers include 3 and EE. At the event this week, the technology has often been mentioned in the same breath as voice-over-LTE (VoLTE), as a way of providing seamless voice services across networks.

With operator support for WiFi varying widely between markets, Figueroa said that “there’s something undeniable about this – users want WiFi, they have a lot of devices, and they get connected to your network, or they get connected to someone else’s WiFi network”.

But one of the big question marks over operator WiFi deployments – the best business model to make it pay – is ever present.

“Some operators have a lot of spectrum that they own and have rights to, so for them the strategy might be totally different to an operator that doesn’t have a lot of spectrum. And those strategies will be very different to a fixed-line operator, or a virtual operator,” Figueroa said.