| BT to offer converged fixed mobile service |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Friday, 12 May 2006 | |
  
It follow the launch last year of a similar service, BT Fusion also developed with Alcatel and designed to operate in the home or small business premises. BT says it will be part of a suite of services that will offer large businesses the chance to bring their fixed and mobile services together and to run a common set of applications and calling features across an integrated IP broadband network. Steven Evans, BT's chief of wireless broadband and future products, said that BT had chosen Alcatel as its development partner "as they bring considerable experience of fixed mobile convergence from our work together on BT Fusion and also from working with our 21CN network development, an essential component of the solution." BT says it will build the system over the coming months and will undertake live pilot implementations with corporate customers in early 2007. "By linking information from a user's calendar the network will ensure that, for example, if the user is in a meeting, an incoming call will be automatically diverted to voicemail, reverting to normal service when the meeting ends. Alternatively, certain pre-selected callers can be either routed directly to the user or to a pre-specified alternative colleague in the company." BT says its contract with Alcatel encompasses the development, testing and launch of the new service. In parallel, BT is testing a number of different dual mode mobile handsets and says discussions are well advanced with manufacturer, which it has not named, on supplies for launch. According to market researcher, Ovum, the service will be a centrex-like solution, hosted in the BT network, but capable of being integrated with the enterprise's own PABXs. "BT will launch with the capability to interwork with the dominant suppliers - Nortel, Avaya and Cisco were all mentioned - with others to be added later," Ovum said. Writing in the company's EuroView daily, Ovum analysts, Richard Mahony and Jeremy Green observed: "considering that the product is not yet ready, BT has disclosed a surprising amount of detail...The dual-mode devices will be capable of being addressed by either a cellular number or a fixed extension number - and the option to use both numbers is possible. "The presence capabilities of the 21CN, together with information from the home location registers of BT's MVNO partner Vodafone, will be used to route calls over the cheapest network, and to ensure that mobile-terminated calls don't have to 'trombone' via the PABX when the mobile is registered on the GSM network. Calls will be carried over the WiFi network whenever coverage is available, and calls between two devices both registered on WiFi will be free. The devices will also work over end users' home WiFi networks, and BT will try to add hotspot coverage as soon as possible." According to Mahony and Green, BT expects to work with device manufacturers and Alcatel to develop FMC client software. "Interestingly, the company does not seem to be daunted by delays in standardising voice call continuity in 3GPP, which other prospective suppliers have told us are holding up efforts to ensure that handover between GSM and WiFi can be supported," they said. BT claims that at launch the service will support handover from the WiFi network to the public mobile network, but not in the other direction; users coming into WiFi coverage will continue their calls on GSM. |
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