BT offers fixed mobile convergence for corporates

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 17 September 2006 08:13

Your IT - Home IT

BT has unveiled a corporate version of BT Fusion: its converged cellular WiFi telephony product which has been on sale to UK consumers since mid 2005. Earlier announcements by BT suggest it is just the firs phase in a very ambitious plan to offer converged fixed mobile services to large organisations.

The service uses a dual-mode mobile phone that incorporates both regular GSM and additional WiFi connectivity. Within a company's premises, calls made from these mobile phones are connected via WiFi access points and are routed over existing fixed-line infrastructure. Outside the office the device works like a regular mobile phone.

BT says the new service will enable organisations to take advantage of fixed-mobile convergence and their increasing deployment of IP telephony and WiFi coverage to potentially deliver greater productivity, the possibility of reduced GSM call costs and to result in improved quality of service to their customers.

Deployed globally across a multinational corporation BT Fusion could offer huge savings by routing the calls to travelling executives through the company's BT- supplied global network rather than through cellular networks with high international roaming charges.

The first customer to trial the service is Leeds City Council, the second largest local authority in the UK, and which has the largest in-house ICT provision of any local authority. It has deployed BT Corporate Fusion across two of its premises in order to assess its ability to improve productivity and improve communications.

BT announced in May plans for what it described as "a groundbreaking new fixed-mobile converged service for large businesses and multi-national corporates both in and outside the UK....[that] 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: "This new service will harness the power of wireless broadband on customer's existing fixed infrastructure, BTs 21st Century network and a new generation of dual mode WiFi/GSM mobile phones."

He added: "We have chosen Alcatel as our 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 said its contract with Alcatel encompassed the development, testing and launch of the new service. "BT is in parallel testing a number of different dual mode mobile handsets and discussions are well advanced with these manufacturers on supplies for launch."

BT said it would be building the solution over the coming months and would be undertaking live pilot implementations with corporate customers in early 2007. "The new service, given the project name 'Enterprise FMC', is yet another demonstration of BT's strategy to deliver to customers the benefits of convenience, cost reductions and the best available connectivity to their corporate information and applications wherever they are at any time," the company said.

The company promised that a link to its 21CN network would "enable intelligent routing of calls...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.


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