BT launching enterprise cellular-only FMC trial

BT Global Services is experimenting with a cellular-only fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) service, announcing today it will launch with several multinational enterprise customers using OnRelay’s mobile PBX platform. Unlike the other solutions in BT’s consumer and business Fusion portfolio, OnRelay’s platform doesn’t require dual-mode Bluetooth or WiFi devices that switch between the cellular and wireline network. Instead, OnRelay’s software solely uses the mobile wide-area network, running enterprise PBX functions over a 3G data channel.

BT has been testing the service with a handful of customers in continental Europe, but it now plans to expand the platform into a commercial trial to its UK-based business base, targeting multinational Fortune 100 companies, many of which have substantial presences in the US.

OnRelay’s MBX platform joins a growing number of FMC solutions BT has launched since 2006 to target the mobility needs of its global enterprise base, including a dual-mode solution based on Cisco Systems’ Call Manager solution and a hosted solution based on Alcatel-Lucent’s FMC platform. But OnRelay’s is the first single-mode wireless solution, eliminating the need for a business customer to procure dual-mode WiFi or Bluetooth phones for its employees or deploy a parallel wireless LAN network.

OnRelay’s MBX platform is a client-server solution, requiring an on-site or hosted server that integrates with any enterprise PBX system and a hefty software client in the device, limiting the service to smartphones. Instead of using session initiation protocol (SIP) to link PBX services like call forwarding, extension dialing and directories to the device, MBX uses Telephony Internetworking Protocol, a proprietary protocol OnRelay said is optimized for the wireless network conditions. The protocol splits the network functionality in a 3G network between the voice and data channels, delivering the voice calls themselves over a circuit-switched call but the PBX features over a simultaneous data connection. OnRelay CEO Ivar Plahte said the platform creates what is essentially a parallel softphone on every handset, which gives the user the additional advantage of being able to turn the softphone off at the end of the work day, turning the device into an ordinary mobile phone.

Plahte said the platform targets two distinct enterprise needs: creating an FMC network that will allow an enterprise to start tossing wireline desktop extensions and eliminating the need to build a separate and expensive wireless network using WiFi.