March/April 2005

As mobile phones become ever more ubiquitous, it's easy to forget that you can still find other solutions to using telephones on the move within pre-defined areas. It's a market where DECT digital portable telephones can have a significant role, and Philips Business Communications is hoping to reinforce that role with the launch of its latest Mobile@Net Multi-site Mobility solution.

This takes advantage of other recent developments in the company's DECT technology, including its Multi-site Management and Multi-site Roaming features, which have now been enhanced with something called Multi-site Subscription.

Under this system, organisations are not charged a handset licence per DECT user on every site; instead, they pay a one-time licence that allows use of the handset/telephone number combination across the network. The company says this can save costs and management effort.

Later this year the company plans to launch Multi-site Handover - a system aimed at implementations where multiple DECT network clusters overlap on the edges (for instance, in case of an extremely large campus). When a user moves from one DECT network cluster to another, Multi-site Handover will ensure that the call is handed over seamlessly.