Cellular-Internet convergency with quasi-femtocells (July 20, 2008)

There were recent news on BT and T-Mobile USA (at least these two) offering GSM/IP converged services with the additional access poit installed at the subscriber’s premises. I am talking about BT Fusion Mobile and T-Mobile at Home. First product takes advantage of connecting the users of Wi-Fi enabled handsets to the core network over broadband IP connection using UMA. Second one does nearly the same, but the access point contains its own SIM, thus rendering the Wi-Fi capabilities of the handset unnecessary. For the security reasons, T-Mobile at Home allows connection only from the wireline phones attached directly to the router.

These devices both are not pure femtocells, as Telco 2.0 thinks. However, what interesting here from the point of view of service delivery provider, is that Internet and phone line connections could be correlated (i.e. operator could associate the signaling connection with the one for Internet data, despite that they could be esablished from different devices). What about your incoming SMS popping in your Facebook window when you logged on?