Unlicensed Mobile Access: Seamless WiFi to cellular roaming

Ok, so we'll be the first to admit that maybe Voice over WiFi hasn't exactly taken over the world or brought the telcos to their knees. There are loads of reasons why, like that the first WiFi phones aren't that great or easy to use, cellphone minutes are already pretty cheap, and the fact that it's not really possible to automatically switch between cellular and WiFi when you're making a call or downloading something, but a bunch of the heavyhitters like Nokia, Motorola, Cingular, T-Mobile, Sony Ericsson, Siemens, and others are trying to change that. They're trying sort out a single standard called Unlicensed Mobile Access for seamlessly roaming back and forth between GSM cellular and WiFi networks.

[Via PhoneScoop]

[Stephen Coles @ Dec 19th 2005 12:04AM]

Sony Ericsson sounds so good you said it twice.

[shazbot @ Dec 19th 2005 12:04AM]

The idea of true interoperability between Wi Fi and cellular networks is truly revolutionary.

However V-O-Wi Fi will take a while to be fully adopted, as I'm sure the hand off between neighboring 802.11 nodes wont be as seamless as between cells. 802.11 simply wasnt designed to handle all the complexity inherent in managing user traffic from a moving location.

That said, I'm sure it isnt too far off that someone will open one of these new Linux based wireless routers and literally hack together some kind of network-accessed authentication database standard for roaming authentication. I know such services already exist to handle stationary links such as most Starbucks Wireless users.

Give it another year or so and it may very well become a new standard alongside strict cellular only devices.