AT&T, Avaya unveil mobile convergence

Businesses and organisations can now gain more control over mobile communication costs while providing workers with greater flexibility with a new convergence offer from AT&T and Avaya, reports CNNMoney.

A new version of AT&T Mobile Extension combines Avaya's unified communications technologies with AT&T's qualified voice services and compatible wireless devices in a packaged solution with predictable monthly costs.

This latest enhancement to AT&T Mobile Extension is designed for companies using Avaya Communication Manager IP telephony on premises to extend corporate calling features. AT&T Mobile Extension supports the industry's leading mobile device platforms: iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.

The universal demand for constant access to voice and data communication, along with the increasingly rich availability of WiFi and cellular connectivity, is driving a widespread demand for converged WiFi/cellular applications and services, says EDN.

Promising better access to voice and data services as well as lower communication costs, fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) has the potential to greatly affect the world of communications.

Before FMC technology can truly take off, however, it is critical for wireless-IP networks and other devices to deliver the same underlying quality of service as their cellular counterparts.

Canadian telecommunications company Telus has heeded the convergence call and is issuing 32 000 credentials for secure physical access to facilities and logical access to computer networks, according to Secure ID News.

“The project began in late 2005 as an IT project for logical access,” says Stephen Pedersen, manager of security development for Telus. But it soon became clear that it made sense to add physical access control to the same ID, and the two projects collapsed into one.

All told there are three technologies on the card: an HID global proximity coil for legacy access control; an iClass contactless smart card chip for new access control systems; and a contact chip from Gemalto for logical access. The smart card is personalised with the employees name and picture for photo identification.