City Council first customer for corporate FMC product
BT has announced the launch of a corporate version of its Fusion FMC product, which uses dual mode GSM and WiFi phones to route calls made within a hotspot via WiFi Access Points into BT’s fixed network, rather than into a mobile operator’s network.
The lanch is further evidence that FMC provides as much of an opportunity to steal minutes from mobile operators as it does for mobile operators to subsititute fixed for mobile minutes.
The first customer to trial the service in the UK is Leeds City Council (LCC), the second largest local authority in the UK. The Council, which has the largest in-house ICT provision of any local authority, is piloting BT Corporate Fusion across two of its premises, in order to assess its capability to improve productivity and improve communications.
BT will announce details of mobile handset strategic suppliers in the coming weeks. The service will initially be launched in the UK and Italy in early 2007, followed by a phased international roll out in Germany, Benelux, Spain and France, with confirmation of these and other countries following².
BT’s previously announcemedon 11th May a relationship with Alcatel to develop a hosted variant of the BT Corporate Fusion service (referred to in this announcement using its generic name, Enterprise FMC. BT Corporate Fusion is the brand name for BT’s suite of Enterprise FMC services)