Voice will be the catalyst for a group of new wholesale services for applications with all "postage and packing" charges included, for all the networks and places users wish to use that application or content, according to a paper by London research firm STL.

Writing in Gigaom, STL's Martin Geddes predicts a rapid rise of non-traditional voice services as voice is embedded into the general online experience. "You'll be able to call your date from your mobile dating application, without knowing your date's mobile number, and the whole cost of the call will be borne through your dating application subscription," writes Geddes.

Carriers will see a strong lift in the wholesale side of their business as media companies, employers, merchants and government will pay providers to deliver content and applications on their behalf. Geddes says carriers will be delivering to a series of different platforms, locations and applications as communications unify around present technologies.

The key to success will be to control the end users' set-top box with Geddes predicting "whoever gets to deploy and manage these boxes will emerge as the winner in the space."

For more:
Ten things you should know about the future of broadband Article [1]
STL's telco 2.0 research [2] 

Related articles:
Unified communications coming to SMB Report [2] 
How does unified communications help? Report [2]