LONDON -- T-Mobile USA, Inc., and enterprise wireless LAN vendor Meru Networks have teamed up to bring fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) to enterprise customers, using unlicensed mobile access (UMA) technology to let users of T-Mobile devices roam between outdoor cellular infrastructures and indoor Wi-Fi networks without experiencing any interruption to their calls.
T-Mobile has joined Meru's WINS (Wireless Interoperability and Network Solutions) Partner Program, and the two companies have completed interoperability testing of UMA-equipped T-Mobile devices with Meru enterprise WLANs. The testing verified seamless "handoffs" between Meru WLANs and the T-Mobile cellular network. The companies have also agreed to conduct joint marketing and sales activities.
The work done by Meru and T-Mobile is designed to let enterprises save on phone costs as increasing numbers of employees use their cell phone as their primary work phone: whenever end users move onto a Meru virtual cell Wi-Fi network, they no longer eat into the allotted number of minutes in their cell phone plan.
Phillip Redman, a Gartner research vice president who authored the recent report, "Enterprise Mobile Phones Will Replace Desktop Phones in North America," said, "The number of mobile-phone-only users in enterprises is expected to increase six-fold over the next four years. This means enterprises need to start looking now for ways to increase the efficiency and mitigate the costs of their voice communication infrastructures. One effective means of doing this is to combine in-building wireless voice with external cellular services."
T-Mobile (UK)