FMC: One Number,

Many Phones? by Ken Camp

Delivering a single point of contact (number), re- gardless of the number of phones you may have–desktop, mobile, home–is one of the cornerstones of fixed-mobile convergence (FMC). But is it a perfect solution? How many phones do you really need?

• The progress we’ve seen in FMC solutions has been fueled by a combination of factors. The widespread adoption of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for VoIP deployment has delivered more than simply VoIP calling. SIP routing has given service providers a tool to eliminate the barriers between traditional telephony networks and IP-based service networks.

• Handset design is dynamic and constant. The rising processor power and functionality of multi-band handsets provides constant new ideas and techniques to integrate services. Integrating WiFi into handsets yields great potential but remains fraught with challenges.

• Business needs are evolving more quickly than ever. Competing initiatives shift constantly to embrace and incorporate other methods. The rapid evolution to a commu-nications-enhanced business process (CEBP) integration of network services with enterprise business applications is a prime driver of change.

The struggle to find the right fit is in balancing many factors. Do we need one phone with many numbers? Or do we need one number on many phones? The answer sometimes seems to be both, but that can simply be a nuance used by a particular solution provider to solve one aspect of the larger issue from their vantage point.

These are, in part, influencers of the business drivers. Certainly cost is a business driver for FMC. The idea of moving a call off the more expensive cellular network to the corporate or home wireless LAN (WLAN) is important as a cost reduction, not as a technology feature. But this convergence of network services, from what have been distinctly separate networks, also presents an integration of applications and services in a new light. Whether we call it convergence, soft-

ware-oriented architecture, or software as a service doesn’t matter. The collision between network services and business applications is driven by changing business needs.

As the cost of integrated circuits drops and CPU capability gets more efficient, devices shrink and get more efficient. Mobile technology that was once expensive and uncommon is now in the hands of nearly everyone. The rise of wireless broadband technologies coupled with advances in device design has brought us to the point where, for many professionals, a Blackberry or smartphone device connected via high-speed technologies has become not just a business tool but the primary workstation. Today, mobile computing solutions provide a fundamental business tool that many organizations simply can’t function without. This shift toward mobile, ubiquitous access further fuels the advance to FMC.

In the past 10 years, we’ve seen convergence taking place on many different levels. Circuit convergence was driven by cost reduction. Workforce and internal services staff integration soon followed. Desktops have converged to smaller, lighter devices, now including FMC-enabled mobile phones.

Frank Paterno, Vice President of Marketing at Intelliverse ( www.intelliverse.com), equates some of the business needs we’re seeing today as a natural evolution. “Some of the nuances of unified communications are a re-emergence of the find-me/follow-me approaches we were using ten years ago,” Paterno says. “Local number portability (LNP) is a huge difference since the last cycle of unified messaging efforts. The practical viability of being able to easily port numbers makes the convergence of these solutions a practical approach.”

Paterno describes the past approach to getting many numbers onto a single phone. Like GrandCentral ( www.grandcen tral.com), Intelliverse offers a solution that’s based on the find-me/follow-me concepts of earlier generations. In the past, users had to obtain a new special phone number, then forward all of their calls to the new number and allow that number

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