Motorola Plans Wi-Fi/Cellular Hybrid Phone
By Staff -- TWICE, 7/7/2003
Schaumburg, Ill.— Motorola said it plans second-half product trials of hybrid Wi-Fi/cellular phones that would hand off a cellphone call to a Wi-Fi local area network that uses voice-over-IP technology.
It's targeted initially to enterprises whose employees would need only one phone number to be reached in or out of the office. It would reduce the number of handsets that an enterprise must buy and provide employees with greater mobility within a LAN.
Analyst Erach Desai of American Technology Research said the technology would eventually migrate from enterprises to Wi-Fi "hot spots" and then to home networks. He expects sales in late 2004.
