While WebRTC seems to be emerging as an enterprise play, because of it’s contact center enhancement capability, I’ve been asked more than a few times why WebRTC might be good for service providers or carriers.  This is an especially important question with Mobile World Congress looming.  In fact, in the Dialogic booth we will have some IMS and VoLTE product demonstrations, which you might expect of us at Mobile World Congress, but we’re also having a demonstration involving WebRTC.  Why is that?

There are various and complex reasons carriers care about WebRTC, in fact many more than can be stated in this blog. There are research reports you can obtain if you are deeply interested, such as from Disruptive Analysis.

But one key reason is that many carrier telco applications, such as RCS applications, can be extended by using WebRTC. In other words, there is an opportunity to make more money! Including a WebRTC gateway, for example, would be a great way to extend an existing application suite to include a different kind of endpoint presence that includes WebRTC. Many of the telco applications also include a media server somewhere in the mix.  Including native WebRTC support in the media server also enables the application to better handle WebRTC presence.  For example, many carriers offer conferencing solutions to their (business) subscribers.  Including WebRTC support makes the solution more modern so that it can handle a voice and/or video conference from landline phones, mobile smartphones, and any WebRTC endpoint, whether that originated from a landline or mobile environment. 

Next week I’ll delve into a couple of more reasons.