MobileTrax: The Cell Phone as Your Office Phone

Gerry Purdy at MobileTrax writes why he believes the cell phone will become the main office phone too in the next five years. He states that as more handset incorporate Wi-Fi then it is "technically possible for cell phones to communicate with the IP/PBX phone system. This will allow the cell phone to operate using VoIP in the office and, thus, make it operate as an office phone when you’re in the office."

Purdy thinks that if and when this happens, a "number of services will become available to the employee when they can use their cell phone with the company’s PBX system," such as:

• Access to the company phone directory so that anyone in the company can be reached using an extension number rather than dialing a complete phone number.
• Ability to find anyone by name search by spelling their name on the numeric keypad.
• Ability to set up company conference calls.
• Ability to use least-cost routing for outside calls, e.g. using VoIP and services like Skype to connect to other people through out the world.
• Use of the phone as an intercom to quickly dialog between two people (“Mary, you have a call on line 1”).
• Retrieve voice mail.

Purdy then goes into the potential of the "interoperability standard called Unwired Mobile Access (UMA) that will allow calls originated on one network to seamless migrate to the other network." He concludes that:

So, while no one is using the standard cell phone as their office phone today, it won’t be long before most office workers will get a new cell phone and software that will allow their cell phone to be used as an office phone when in the office. It’s going to take five or more years before this will be something broadly used, but rest assured, a paradigm shift is coming. Traditional desk and cordless IP/PBX phones are going to be replaced by cell phones with Wi-Fi networking and IP/PBX connectivity.