* BellSouth begins wireless voice trial
Last week at Supercomm, BellSouth announced the market trial of a service that integrates voice communications over an IEEE 802.11 wireless campus network and the Cingular mobile wireless network.
Grey Worldwide’s Atlanta office employees will carry a single handset that operates on the cellular network outside the office and the wireless LAN, or Wi-Fi, on the corporate campus. While employees are working at their desks, the wireless handset will rest in a charging cradle that integrates directly with the business features housed in the company’s VoIP phone system.
Grey Worldwide is one of the world’s top 10 advertising agencies. “The service is the perfect fit for an active and client-focused business such as ours,” said Grey’s Chris Rich, executive vice president of account management, in a statement.
In another statement, BellSouth said that “the seamless mobility trial is part of extensive ongoing wireless/wireline integration initiatives between BellSouth and Cingular. The joint work includes research and product development, sales initiatives and bundled offers with both traditional services and innovative solutions such as seamless mobility.”
When we asked BellSouth for further details, the company told us the Motorola handset works on the campus with the premises-based PBX, offering a full range of PBX features – but if the trial proves out, the long-term goal would be to offer network-based features as well as a premises-based alternative.
There are network-based security features, and each handset also undergoes MAC-layer authentication to assure that only authorized users can use the campus network for voice access.
