Although touted as the deployment of “the world’s first combined fixed and mobile phone,” the new BT Fusion service from BT announced today essentially is a market trial of a mobile service than spans home and mobile use of a phone.
It appears to be mostly a trial of how the public would react to a Wi-Fi phone that works at home and out of the home. The service does not at this time use Wi-Fi technology, and is not a trial of Wi-Fi combined with mobile.
Instead, in the new BT Fusion service, a customer receives a phone that works as a standard GSM mobile device at home or away, but is charged lower rates similar to landline costs when used in the home.
The service requires the customer to sign up for the BT Broadband DSL service, but the broadband connection is used mostly for data service. When the customer is at home, the mobile device supposedly connects to a special BT Broadband router (which is called a “hub” in the BT press announcement) via Bluetooth, and the voice from the mobile phone is somehow sent over the broadband network (the BT representative made available to the press could not explain how this would be done).
The BT representative did not know who makes the “hub” used in the new service or the network infrastructure that will support it. The phones include the Motorola Inc. V560 GSM phone, available now, and the Motorola Razr V3, which will be added to the service soon.
A BT representative said the “hub” is capable of Wi-Fi but that connectivity will not be used by the voice service for the time being.
The difference in rates for the “home” use compared to mobile use con be considerable. Off-peak savings can be as high as 95 percent
Because the range of Bluetooth is only about 30 feet, it is likely that, in many instances, the home user would not be connecting via the home “hub” and would, instead, be on the standard mobile network.
According to U.K. industry analysis firm Ovum, the range of the Bluetooth connection is “reasonable,” and calls have improved quality when the connection is made through the home hub.
One potential issue is that the lowered rates apply only to calls to land lines in the United Kingdom. International calls or calls to mobile phones are charged at standard rates. There are two service packages that resemble mobile packages: BT Fusion 100, offering 100 cross-network, anytime minutes priced at 9.99 pounds a month, and BT Fusion 200, offering 200 cross-network, anytime minutes at 14.99 pounds a month.
Also, BT apparently still will require that customers sign up for a traditional land line because it is not selling so-called naked DSL. According to Ovum, that issue is the subject of some debate in the United Kingdom and regulators might require service providers to offer naked DSL, which would have a negative impact on BT rates.
