Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Nokia has announced the first pilot trial of seamless cellular to WiFi network roaming using the unlicensed mobile access (UMA) specification standardised by 3GPPP last April. It sends a warning to cellular operators of loss of traffic and revenue to fixed networks in the future.
The trial will last at least two months and is being conducted, according to Nokia under real life surroundings and conditions. The trial is being staged in the city of Oulu in conjunction with the city government and the DNA/Finnet group.
It will make us of the free WiFi hotspots installed around the city last year under the Council's Pan Oulu project. Fifty families will participate using a new Nokia 6136 mobile device that combines GSM and WiFi technology.
The UMA standard lets mobile operators deliver voice, data and IMS/SIP (IP Multimedia Subsystem/Session Initiation Protocol) applications to mobile phones on local networks. Its ultimate goal is the convergence of mobile, fixed and Internet telephony.
With many US cities now deploying meshed WiFi networks UMA's success and widespread adoption could seriously impact on cellular operators' revenues by rerouting call traffic and hence call revenue onto the broadband networks that underpin WiFi networks. Hence Vodafone's highly publicised move to become a converged communications company.
According to some vendors, UMA has now been renamed Generic Access Network (GAN). The core of UMA or GAN functionality is the GAN controller which sits in the operator's network and is integrated with its existing voice and data components through the standard 3GPP-defined network interfaces. The GANC translates the signals coming from the handset over WiFi to make them appear to be coming from another base station. Thus, when a mobile moves from a GSM to a WiFi network, it appears to the core network as if it is simply on a different base station.
The successful BT Fusion service offers a restricted version of UMA functionality. With a dual mode WiFi/GSM phone calls can switch seamlessly between cellular and the user's home broadband service equipped with a WiFi access point, but there is no roaming to different WiFi networks as with the UMA trial. BT was reported having more than 13,000 customers in February 2006.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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