Wi-Fi roaming: US T-Mobile gets it, BT drops it
While BT is busy cutting off its Fusion customers, T-Mobile USA has announced a deal with Meru to provide cellular roaming to Wi-Fi networks.
BT is replacing BT Fusion Business with Office Anywhere, which the former monopoly describes as being cheaper and coming with a free BlackBerry too. But for customers who were using Fusion's Universal Mobile Access (UMA) capability to get coverage, that's little solace. Consumers will also lose BT Fusion come the end of March.
The concept of getting punters to install their own cellular base station, and provide backhaul over their existing internet connection, is pretty simple - but practicalities mean that most of us are still using the nearest cell tower even from within our homes and offices. BT originally tried using Bluetooth to route calls to an in-home hub which could then send them over the ADSL line, but Bluetooth proved ineffective, so BT moved to Wi-Fi connections.
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