BT Group comes out with a mobile-fixed line Fusion

LONDON: British telecom major BT Group Plc has come out with a low-cost mobile phone that can switch seamlessly as a fixed line phone also. The company said it took more than a year for it to develop the product, BT Fusion, and initially there will be some 400 customers for the service. The compatible handset has been manufactured by Motorola Inc.

For BT, this is an effort to plug the large scale migration of fixed line subscribers to cellular service. The handset can function on BT's fixed-line network at home or in the office and will automatically switch to a wireless network when the user is on the move.

The black and silver clamshell Motorola v560 handset also offers video and digital photo services. Users will have to pay the landline rate of 5.5 pence for up to one hour of off-peak calls and 3 pence a minute for peak calls to land-line numbers. The company said an off-peak 10 minute call using BT Fusion would cost 95 per cent less than a mobile call.

BT Retail's head, Ian Livingstone, said, "You're getting the cost of a fixed line, the convenience of a mobile and better coverage."

BT today is one of the few European telcos not operating a mobile service of its own. It has an arrangement with Vodafone for this purpose.

The company has introduced two tariff models, BT Fusion 100 and BT Fusion 200, which offer 100 and 200 minutes of free calls to any network at any time respectively. Customers opting for the service will get a free handset and a free wireless base station that can support up to six different mobile phones, three of them simultaneously. However, they will be required to subscribe to BT Broadband, a high-speed Internet connectivity, which costs 17.99 pounds a month, and must have a BT telephone line, which costs 10.50 pounds per month in rental. The service will use Bluetooth wireless technology.

BT also plans to launch Wi-Fi phones for large businesses next year, and expand its handset range to six phones within a year.

Analysts feel the new phone is a step towards total convergence - where mobile and landline phones are completely interchangeable. However, BT's competitors are not amused. Hutchison Whampoa's spokesperson said, "We think 'Confusion' is a better name for BT's new service. It sounds like an expensive cordless phone."

Source: earthtimes.org/articles/show/3228.html