Tuesday, March 30, 2004
LongBoard Fine-Tunes WiFi-to-Cell Roaming
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "NEWS" @ 09:00 PM
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1558113,00.asp
"SANTA CLARA, Calif.—Executives at LongBoard Inc. said Tuesday that they're in trials with a technology that will allow a mobile handset to roam between WiFi and cellular networks without dropping calls. LongBoard's OnePhone application will be rolled out for health-care providers this summer and will gain a European carrier most likely in the fourth quarter, executives said at this week's Spring 2004 VON Conference & Expo here. LongBoard will market its OnePhone software application through resellers to carriers, asking handset makers to adapt their products to support the technology."
The overall strategy looks convoluted and error prone to me, but that could be my cynicism with wireless coverage and stability in North America, which may be why they are going to try in Europe first where they have one basic cell phone standard, not, uhm, eleventy two. ;)
What devices will be supported? "The LongBoard software will work with the Symbian operating system for handhelds and Microsoft's PocketPC 2003. PocketPC 2002 support is "flaky," Schwartz said, and the software does not currently run on the Palm OS."
"SANTA CLARA, Calif.—Executives at LongBoard Inc. said Tuesday that they're in trials with a technology that will allow a mobile handset to roam between WiFi and cellular networks without dropping calls. LongBoard's OnePhone application will be rolled out for health-care providers this summer and will gain a European carrier most likely in the fourth quarter, executives said at this week's Spring 2004 VON Conference & Expo here. LongBoard will market its OnePhone software application through resellers to carriers, asking handset makers to adapt their products to support the technology."
The overall strategy looks convoluted and error prone to me, but that could be my cynicism with wireless coverage and stability in North America, which may be why they are going to try in Europe first where they have one basic cell phone standard, not, uhm, eleventy two. ;)
What devices will be supported? "The LongBoard software will work with the Symbian operating system for handhelds and Microsoft's PocketPC 2003. PocketPC 2002 support is "flaky," Schwartz said, and the software does not currently run on the Palm OS."
