Companies could make significant savings by creating mobile
phone networks in their offices, mobile phone supplier Nokia has
claimed.
To set up a local mobile phone network would require a company to
install a mobile base station in its building. The network would
allow free calls within the building and use wireless communication
standards such as Bluetooth and 802.11.
According to Nokia, organisations that use mobile phone technology
for all their corporate telephone needs could save as much as 20%,
compared to traditional phone networks. However, the necessary
technology is still a couple of years away.
"We can tell where a user is making a call and allow free calls
within the user's home network," said Joe Barrett, director for
industry marketing at Nokia. A second tariff would be levied on
users making calls into the office, and a higher tariff would be
charged for normal mobile phone calls.
By using location-based services in conjunction with a local base
station, Barrett said the Nokia approach to mobile communications
is superior to traditional phone exchanges and other alternatives
designed to allow roaming between mobile phone networks.
Barrett said the disadvantage with roaming between 802.11 wireless
networks and mobile phone networks is that a call is suspended when
the user moves between the two types of network. This would not
happen if all calls were made over a mobile network, he said.
In terms of future mobile devices, Barrett said users should expect
to see devices and networks that support faster networks based on
the HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) standard, which
provides network bandwidth of 10mbps for downloading and 6mbps for
uploading data.
In the next couple of months Nokia is set to introduce an updated
version of its 6800 corporate mobile phone, which will include
client software from Research In Motion to allow the phone to send
and receive e-mail in the same way as Research In Motion's popular
Blackberry device.