GENEVA— Switzerland's incumbent telco is planning to introduce an integrated GPRS, UMTS and Public WLAN access service soon in conjunction with Microsoft, the companies said today (Sunday 12th October) at the Telecom World 2003 event here.
Swisscom Eurospot is fast becoming the largest operator of public wireless LAN access in Europe through an aggressive strategy of internal development and acquisitions.
The service, to be offered in conjunction with Swisscom Mobile, will be based on seamless roaming using a multistandard laptop card, single log-on and billing, flat pricing, managed security and an enhancement to the wireless networking service in Windows XP.
The companies will also develop communications services that enable enterprise applications such as Microsoft Exchange 2003 to leverage the capabilities of Windows notebooks and TabletPCs as well as Windows Mobile devices with the .NET Compact Framework-- Smartphone and Pocket PC.
The service will be targeted at the business and corporate market, rather than consumers, and should be launched within a few months.
Building on the .NET application server and development platform, Swisscom today introduced its 'HotSpot Locator, an application that quickly finds the nearest public wireless LAN hotspot and displays its location using the MapPoint Web Service.
HotSpot Locator was built by Swisscom Mobile and Microsoft Consulting Services using the .NET framework and therefore not only supports any Windows or Windows Mobile device, but also WAP phones and PDAs.
Jens Alder, CEO of Swisscom AG, said : "Our collaboration with Microsoft will allow Swisscom to be the first operator in Europe to enable easy-to-use and highly secure public Wi-Fi access services with Windows XP."
Swisscom Eurospot has rolled out hotspots in Germany, the UK, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Spain, as well as in its own territory. It now has about 2150 PWLAN throughout the continent, and has secured roaming agreements with several other operators to extend its offering.
