A confused reader has been pressing for details about the Anthony Marano fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) installation I described last week. In trying to cram the many dimensions of a complex situation into a couple of short newsletters, I fear I might have lost you, too. So let me attempt to clear up questions about the company's dual-pronged FMC approach by telling what I've told "Lane" on the Network World Wireless and Mobility community site (check out those posts here and here).

The main networking challenge at Chicago’s Anthony Marano is delivering reliable, high-performing, internally mobile voice. It is especially difficult to satisfy the company’s sales people, which are highly mobile within the company’s facilities as they move among the sales floor, a very large warehouse and administrative offices. They need very fast call setup, transfer and forwarding times, because they close business all day long, much like a broker on a trading floor, except that the orders they rapidly fill are for perishable fruits and vegetables. They occasionally move outside the company - and when they do, they need to be able to do it without dropping calls.

Until recently, all mobile personnel (salespeople and administrative staff) used an early system that integrated a Wi-Fi network from Proxim Wireless, an IP PBX from Avaya and both an FMC appliance and specialized dual-mode handsets from Motorola. They got mobile Wi-Fi voice indoors, cellular mobile voice outdoors, Wi-Fi-to-cellular transparent roaming and PBX extension across the converged mobile network. But that system is now defunct.

Early this year, as Anthony Marano was seeking a new FMC alternative, its IT director Chris Nowak gleefully discovered T-Mobile’s Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) FMC service and installed it for use with dual-mode BlackBerry smartphones, hoping it would serve everyone’s needs. Nowak envisioned eventually going “PBX-less” and simply using T-Mobile Centrex and cellular services, a new internal Meru Wi-Fi LAN, and dual-mode RIM BlackBerry smartphones as its mobile telephony and FMC platform.

Alas, the UMA service didn’t accommodate the sales force because of the slow call setup times described in the June 9 newsletter (but worked fine for administrative staff). Then Nowak discovered startup Agito Networks’ CPE-based system, which delivered the performance the sales force demanded. He retained the UMA service for administrative staff and added Agito for salespeople, ending up with two solutions. And because Agito doesn’t support BlackBerry, due to a lack of voice API availability from RIM, he also ended up with two handset populations.

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