CiceroPhone combines Wi-Fi and cellular networks

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Cicero Networks, an Irish company that provides wVoIP solutions, has announced its VoIP client for Nokia S60 handsets: CiceroPhone. This dual-mode application makes it possible for smartphones to roam between Wi-Fi and traditional mobile networks without losing the call signal.

The Nokia S60 family includes handsets like the E60, E61, E70 and N80 and they all will be able to use the software that will be released on November 30th. The CiceroPhone application will reside on the handset while a backend technology must be installed on the mobile operators servers.

They work together so that the user will be automatically and seamlessly moved over the available network (Wi-Fi or cellular).This also makes it possible to route the call over the best available network where best is referred both to the signal quality and the call cost. Besides CiceroPhone also allows the optimization of the routing service based on a range of phone numbers for specific networks.

Until now the Cicero Networks applications were only available on Windows Mobile phones where it was launched last year. The move to one of the most used smartphones (especially by business customers) will certainly benefit both the company and the technology.

The market for CiceroPhone, in fact, is huge because it is estimated that more than 70 million S60 devices have already been sold. If CiceroPhone will be able to reach all these customers then it could really be the killer application for the wVoIP technology.

Cicero Networks announced that two operators have already started to use its technology (Hello AS in Norway and Messagenet in Italy) while about thirty operators, mainly in Europe and Asia, expressed their interest.