A Symbol Plan

Wi-Fi isn't a technology you'd typically associate with voice. After all, 802.11 wireless technologies were designed for networks, and networks mean data. (And data means “factual information [as measurements or statistics] used as a basis for reasoning, discussion or calculation,” according to Webster's. We know; we looked it up.) But if you can packetize the corporate phone network with an IP PBX, why can't you do the same thing for wireless phone networks?

That's the reasoning behind Symbol Technologies' patented NetVision suite of direct sequence IP voice-over-802.11b products. The company's NetVision Phone is a wireless VoIP handset with voice messaging data capabilities; its sibling NetVision Data Phone adds integrated bar code scanning and Web-client data capabilities. “You're seeing the entire industry move from analog to IP,” said Richard Watson, Symbol's director of telephony product marketing. “We're adding mobility to the mix.”

Watson pointed to statistics that found that 60% to 70% of the phone calls going into an office go directly into voice mail, and countless man-hours are wasted accessing and returning those calls. People really want to take their office extensions with them when they're away from their desks, Watson said, and Symbol's solution allows businesses to use their existing wireless network infrastructure instead of building an entirely new network.

“Enterprises have already made the conscious decision to invest in wireless infrastructure for their data networks and in their desktop voice networks,” Watson said. “They aren't going to spend the money for a wireless voice network if they have to build an entirely new RF infrastructure.”

Right now, Symbol is selling its technology directly to enterprises, but the vendor is also targeting carriers exploring the LAN business. With carriers such as Nextel looking to complement their WANs with wireless data services on corporate campus environments, Symbol's technology could be an additional value-added service to those offerings, Watson said. In addition, merging both 802.11 and PCS/cellular technologies into one handset and one service gives carriers a way to offload traffic from their public networks onto private networks, offering a way to conserve spectrum in busy business areas.

“We are talking to some of the big carriers right now,” Watson confirmed. Over 802.11b technology, one hopes.