BT brings fixed-mobile converge Asia Pacific corporates

Stuart Corner
Friday, 11 July 2008 11:02

Your IT - Home IT

BT has unveiled plans to launch BT Corporate Fusion, a fixed mobile convergence offering for corporate customers in Australia and other Asia Pacific markets.

BT claims that Fusion frees an organisation "from the hassles of having to manage multiple fixed and mobile communication technologies...With one business number and one voice mailbox for communication wherever they are, the employees can be reached by colleagues, customers and business partners far more easily."

According to BT, "corporations with offices in different countries equipped with BT Corporate Fusion will potentially be able to reduce costs as employees travelling between different offices can use mobile devices to access the local corporate network (wireless LAN + MPLS) for making international calls instead of relying on outside roaming support. For employees, a single mobile device supports their communication within and outside the office."

It is similar to the service announced last month by Vodafone Australia, Vodafone Business One . However this relies on an interface between a Vodafone-supplied Cisco IP PBX and the Vodafone cellular network to manage call routing and is  aimed at SMEs. The BT Fusion offering is "a completely client-based solution supports both GSM and CDMA settings and is PABX vendor and mobile operator agnostic, meaning that it is not tied to any specific manufacturers' mobile handset models."

End-users can use existing phones as long as they are BT Corporate Fusion-compliant and BT says companies do not have to invest heavily in equipment and related set up or manage handset inventory. "Using prevailing Wi-Fi technologies to interface with the fixed network and with WAP/GPRS/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi to regularly keep the handset clients up to date, BT Corporate Fusion promises fast and seamless communication support to end-users, with minimal user disruptions."
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