Mobile operator Nextel Communications is to
begin trials of a phone that can be used on Wi-Fi wireless Lans
and added that by next year it would offer a mobile phone with
Motorola based on Microsoft's Windows Powered Smartphone
platform.
The Smartphone device will support tri-band GSM/GPRS as well as
Nextel's iDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) infrastructure,
according to Barry West, executive vice-president and chief
technology officer of Nextel.
The mobile operator provides advanced services to government and
business clients. Its approach has helped it gain market share and
maintain strong revenue and margins, executives said at the CTIA
Wireless trade show.
Nextel and Motorola are also working on a mobile phone with
integrated Wi-Fi wireless Lan capability, which will allow users to
make calls over a home or office Wi-Fi network and use the same
phone to call over the iDEN network while on the road, West
said.
The phone could allow customers to replace a cordless phone or a
wired PBX (private branch exchange) with a wireless Lan. A call
initiated on the iDEN network would stay on that network when the
user got to the office, but a call begun on the Wi-Fi network would
be dropped once the user moved out of range.
Nextel also could work with providers of cable data services to
send phone calls from the Wi-Fi network over the cable
infrastructure instead of the traditional telecommunications
network.
True handoffs of voice calls between Wi-Fi and mobile networks
could pose big technology problems because Wi-Fi technology is
designed to be inexpensive and relatively simple, West said.
Mobile technologies each have built into them special standards
to allow handoffs as users move around, and those specifications
were not built in to the IEEE 802.11 standard on which Wi-Fi
products are based.