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As predicted, BT Fusion moves on from Bluetooth hotspots to WiFi and goes corporate

Continuing their march towards a grand vision of an IMS future where everything is routed over IP connections, BT has announced that the Fusion product will now be available to corporate customers.

Fusion combines GSM and Wireless LAN connectivity for voice calls, with calls using Voice over IP when on a data network, such as WiFi, then switching to GSM when out of range. However, its initial variant was Bluetooth based, which meant that no more than half a dozen users could be online at a time with one base station - not much use for office workers.

Leeds City Council has been trying the new technology, which uses handsets that can roam seamlessly from WiFi to GSM and back again without even dropping a call, and seem very happy with it.

For the moment those corporate customers will only be able to use WiFi in their own offices, but BT plans to rapidly combine the service with their hotspot-sharing agreements and thus allow corporate customers to roam around the world connecting to WiFi hot spots when they are available: reducing the cost of calls without changing the user experience of picking up the phone and dialling.

The problems of routing voice calls over wireless networks remain: call quality can suffer depending on the capacity of the hot spot, and handset battery life is much reduced. BT isn't saying who will be providing the handsets for the service, only that they are in talks with leading suppliers and will let us know soon.

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