Tatara Systems Inc., a developer of converged mobile service solutions for communications service providers, today at CTIA announced that elements of its Mobile Services Convergence Platform have been selected by British Telecom plc to form part of a voice-over-WLAN trial in the United Kingdom.
The trial aims to test the technological viability of enabling business users and private individuals to switch automatically between WLAN and GSM networks for voice calls.
Trial participants will be issued with Hewlett-Packard Co. iPAQ 6340 personal digital assistant devices, enabled for WLAN and GSM voice connectivity. Initially the trial restricts Wi-Fi access to BT’s Adastral Park research and development labs at Martlesham Heath only, but ultimately users will be able to make voice calls over WLAN networks at the office, at home or at a public hotspot.
When out of range of a WLAN network, the user will make voice calls over the standard GSM network.
The Tatara Subscriber Gateway and the Tatara Service Manager Software Developers Kit (SDK) form a key part of the technology infrastructure that BT is deploying to enable the trial. The Tatara Subscriber Gateway enables trial participants to automatically identify themselves securely to both WLAN and GSM networks through a single subscriber identity module (SIM) card installed within the iPac. The connection between the PDA and the Tatara Subscriber Gateway is enabled using Tatara’s SDK, which is installed on the iPaq device.
For the SIM authentication portion of the trial, the Tatara Mobile Services Convergence Platform uses a two-stage authentication process for secure EAP-SIM authentication over both 802.1x and HTTP -based WLAN networks.
In addition, the Tatara product provides customer care, including network diagnostics, performance monitoring and billing system mediation.
The market will start to see considerable uptake of voice-over-WLAN in 2007, according to industry analyst firm Meta Group. Tatara says that services will begin to roll out in earnest in early 2006, and users will be attracted by the ability to make free or low-cost calls over an IP network while on the move.
“Initial uptake will be among businesses keen to reduce their communications costs,” says Steve Nicolle, CEO at Tatara. “But the proliferation of public WLAN hotspots and home wireless networks, combined with the emergence of dual-mode (WLAN and GSM) handsets, is likely to spur uptake among consumers as well.”
The trial infrastructure is already in place at BT’s Adastral Park research facilities. The trial is scheduled to begin in April 2005.
