CPE makers are currently ahead of the carrier regime in supplying business customers with the ability to maintain mobile voice and data sessions as they roam between Wi-Fi and cellular networks.

For enterprises, the overriding business reason to consider such network convergence is to make mobile workers more productive. Fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) ultimately reduces the number of devices users carry while creating interoperability between their private voice/data networks and public wide-area cellular voice/data networks. This improves user accessibility, collapses the number of messaging systems for them to check and lets them use their internal PBX features and dial plans wherever they are. There are some potential in-building cellular-usage cost savings, too.

The latest company to throw its hat into the enterprise network convergence ring is Agito Networks in Sunnyvale, Calif. The start-up is joining the likes of Aruba Networks, DiVitas Networks, and Siemens with CPE gear that will manage call handoffs as users move from network to network, keeping workers talking and productive.

Agito today announced its RoamAnywhere Mobility Router and accompanying client software for Nokia N Series dual-mode devices, which run the Symbian mobile operating system. Windows Mobile support is slated to follow.

The company’s appliance-based system, to ship late this year, aims to keep users on “free” internal Wi-Fi networks when they are in the building to slash cell costs and to stabilize the handoff experience, explains Pej Roshan, Agito VP of marketing. To do this, the start-up has applied location-based technology to create RoutePoints at building entrances and exits. The RoutePoints sense when a user armed with a dual-mode smart phone is walking in or out of the office door and automatically makes the network transition at these predetermined places. When you are indoors, you are on the Wi-Fi network; when you are outdoors, you’re on the cell network.

When on the cell network, the system turns off the Wi-Fi radio to conserve battery life, according to Agito.

The location-based approach to signal handoff differs from most others, which tend to use signal-strength measurements to determine when it’s time to change networks. As a result, says Roshan, there tends to be a lot of flapping back and forth between cell and Wi-Fi networks indoors as conditions change, which he says degrades the user experience.

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.