BT brings fixed-mobile converge Asia Pacific corporates

Stuart Corner
Friday, 11 July 2008 10:02

Your IT - Home IT

BT intends to roll out Corporate Fusion throughout Asia Pacific. Initial markets will be Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and Korea.

The service evolved out of BT's UK consumer Fusion service, since abandoned in favour of the BT ToGo service launched earlier this year. BT Fusion was designed to overcome BT's lack of its own mobile network in the UK by keeping traffic from its resold mobile service on its fixed network when users were at home.

BT may not have a cellular network but what it does have is a very extensive network in the UK of WiFi hotspots, some 82,000, and these are the heart of the BT ToGo offering. For around $A62 per month on an 18 month contract customers get a free HTC Windows Mobile based smartphone, a BT ADSL service (8Mbps and unlimited downloads) and wireless access point for their home and access to BT's network of WiFi hotspots.

They can surf the Internet from their smartphone at the WiFi hotspots and download as much data as they want for no extra charge, and get cheap VoIP calls via the hotspots. They also get 50 minutes of standard cellular calls per month, 50 text messages and 10Mbytes of data via the cellular network. There are also higher priced plans offering additional call minutes and texts.