Be ready for fixed-mobile convergence challenges

  Google delivers 660,000 hits for a "fixed mobile convergence" search. FMC technology also was prominently featured in Computerworld.com's recent story "13 future mobile technologies that will change your life." And the New York-based telecommunications market research firm Heavy Reading says 60% of telco providers expect most businesses will shift to FMC by 2012. With this kind of momentum, the road to FMC looks inevitable. But even inevitability has its challenges, suggests Kim Ganote, director of product development for Sprint Nextel Corp. of Reston, Va. She says you need an IP-based technology that can handle multiple media types because increasingly mobile devices will be transmitting video as well as voice and data. She touts the Sprint Wireless Integration service as media agnostic. It also ties mobile users to the business by delivering a raft of PBX-controlled features to mobile handsets, such as integrated voice mail, call forwarding, abbreviated dialing and a command set that mimics a desk phone. Still, Ganote says IT may have to work with their PBX supplier to transfer the softkey functions on desk units to mobile ones, while being cognizant of user-interface pitfalls because of the differences between the devices keypads. She says as you give mobile devices to workers choose handhelds that can have "dual personalities," letting people "check in and out, so they do not look like they're connected to the PDX" for when workers go home at night or leave for vacation they can still use their mobile devices for personal use. Certainly the  road to FMC is inevitable, but it will not be without a pothole or two.