Motorola Inc., Avaya Inc. and Proxim Corp. said Tuesday (Jan.14) they will work together to combine the operations of Wi-Fi and cellular networks. The companies will allow mobile users to communicate seamlessly over both Wi-Fi wireless LANs and cellular systems by utilizing a Motorola mobile phone, Avaya's Session Initiation Protocol-enabled Internet Protocol telephony software and Proxim's voice-enabled WLAN infrastructure.
The companies' jointly-developed, standards-based solutions will allow for contiguous voice and data transmission across enterprise networks, public cellular networks, and public hot-spot WLANs based on IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) technology.
"Motorola believes that tying together wireless LANs, IP telephony and cellular technologies in a single handset will extend the mobility of the cellular networks inside the enterprise, and provide the best available access to the user," said Dan Coombes, senior vice president and general manager for Motorola's Network Systems Group.
Michael Thurk, group vice president for Avaya's Converged Systems and Applications Group, said, "Together, we will bring unprecedented value to an organization's network by expanding employees' desktops beyond office walls to virtually wherever an employee happens to be working."
"We have already integrated VoIP [voice-over-Internet Protocol] into our wireless WAN products and this is a logical next step in the development of our WLANs," said Angela Champness, senior vice president and general manager of Proxim's LAN Division.
The IP telephony application will be enabled by Avaya's MultiVantage software, while Motorola will create network mobility management components that control the handoff between local WLAN and cellular networks. Proxim will provide voice-enabled Wi-Fi WLAN infrastructure, quality-of-service software and centralized management systems to facilitate handoffs between access points.
"There is a huge opportunity for this converged solution given the strengths of the IP telephony, WLAN and cellular markets," said Jeremy Duke, president of the Synergy Research Group, a market research firm based in Phoenix. "These three industry leaders together bring the expertise and the vision required to bring this solution to market."
Trials of the joint solution are expected to begin in the second half of 2003.
