Motorola Set To Launch GSM/WiFi Phone
This isn’t a huge surprise on its own. It’s been about a year and a half since we first mentioned the fact that Motorola was working with Proxim and Avaya on a phone that would “seamlessly” roam across cellular and WiFi connections. Thus, it’s not entirely clearly why America’s Network is claiming a “groundbreaking” announcement from Motorola, Proxim and Avaya next week. The details aren’t entirely clear, but it (like the NEC WiFi/3G phone DoCoMo announced last week) is going to be focused on business users, so they can hop on their wireless LAN at work for VoWiFi calls, and use cellular outside the office. It’s unclear if (like the DoCoMo offering) it won’t even work on non-office WiFi systems, but for configuration and business model reasons, it’s entirely possible. Also, it’s still a bit misleading to claim “seamless” roaming, as that implies you’ll be able to walk out of range of your WiFi and have it automatically switch to GSM without the caller knowing (that would be more groundbreaking).
