Ovum: TeliaSonera Denmark trials Motorola WiFi FMC

Jeremy Green and Carrie Pawsey at Ovum write that TeliaSonera "is extending its existing UMA trial with Motorola to include WiFi-capable handsets and access points. The trial, which has hitherto been based on UMA using Bluetooth as the bearer, also marks the transformation of UMA from a de facto specification to a technology standardised by 3GPP."

Green and Pawsey believe "the advent of UMA as a full standard has important implications. It means that operators can now have more confidence that UMA-based solutions will work across vendors' offerings - so that there will be interoperability between one vendor's devices and another's access points."

According to Ovum, the trial is based on the Motorola A910 handset, "which supports WiFi 802.11b/g and all four GSM bands," and "is aimed at the mid-market rather than the high-end or enterprise user."

Green and Pawsey believe that this approach "reflects Motorola's belief that UMA is primarily applicable to the consumer market - particularly since the non-availability of access-point handover in either Bluetooth or WiFi makes it hard to deploy for enterprise customers who need coverage across large sites. This is a shortcoming in the bearers rather than in UMA per se, and will not be fixed simply by the introduction of FMC solutions based on SIP/IMS."

In the end, they note "Motorola says, SIP-based FMC solutions for enterprises are still one to two years away..."