KEY POINTS:
Some years ago an Auckland IT firm in search of new sources of revenue introduced a service where a phone call would follow you round a series of pre-programmed numbers until it found you.
It was probably an idea ahead of its time, and the steps to make
it work were too fiddly, requiring you to dial bits of code into the system to add new locations.
It certainly wasn't enough to save that particular company from extinction, but people kept looking for some kind of unified system.
You might have noticed in recent times that when you call someone on their office extension, you find yourself connected to their mobile.
That kind of fixed-to-mobile convergence is a trick that's been do-able for a while, but it has become a lot easier to set up, and a lot cheaper to run.
"It needs to be painless," says Tim Smith, Cogent's national manager-mobility.
Since the end of last year Cogent has been selling systems built around Vodafone's Talk Zone services, which take advantage of closed network pricing - that is, if Vodafone can keep traffic to its own network, the cost of the call to it drops to almost nothing.
Talk Zone has been round for a couple of years, but having an application wrapped around it makes it more useful for business.
Cogent is already the country's largest reseller of PBXs, with Alcatel, Samsung and NEC systems in its toolkit.
Smith says organisations have made considerable investments in their networks, including phone handsets, and they don't like throwing away equipment unless it breaks.
"Our push it to get the best out of assets already deployed," he says.
When a call comes into the PBX, both the desk phone and the mobile phone of the person being called will ring.
That means fewer missed calls, so fewer call backs - which have to be paid for by the business - and less productivity-sucking telephone tag.
An application loaded onto the mobile phone gives it PBX functions.
The user is able to do things like transfer the call to another line, internally or externally, bring in other lines for a conference call, or look up contacts on the network system.
If a staff member is out of the office, they can use their mobile to dial into the PBX and then out again, for less cost than dialing a number direct from the mobile.
That's because the system can make use of intelligent GSM call routing and voicemail is centralised to one box.
Smith says there has been interest in Communicator Plus systems from small and medium businesses up to larger corporates.
"This functionality is great for real estate companies, companies with big sales forces, service and support organisations where you have techs on the road, and knowledge workers," he says.
While what Cogent is offering is convergence, it is convergence at the level of PBX software, driven by the billing options available from a dominant mobile network operator.
True technological convergence will require a more competitive mobile phone market, and it also implies new handsets or other equipment - a problem the Cogent solution avoids.
In Britain, BT is offering BT Fusion, which seems to link mobile phones to landline technology.
What it actually does is that the customer installs a base station in their home or office.
Then, when the mobile is in range, any incoming or outgoing calls are routed via a Bluetooth connection to the Home Hub base station and become Voice over IP calls using the customer's BT ADSL broadband service.
However, after 18 months, BT Fusion has only 40,000 customers.
Across the Channel, France Telecom has signed up more than 100,000 customers in less than six months for its Unik phone, which offers unlimited calls to landlines or Orange mobile phones when routed through one of French Telecom's Livebox gateways.
Analysts say the difference is there were a lot more Liveboxes in French homes than there were Home Hubs in British ones, and as an integrated fixed and mobile operator the French company has more marketing opportunities.
Brasil Telecom is now offering a similar service.
BT and Brasil Telecom were among of the founders of the Fixed-Mobile Convergence Alliance, which now includes 25 telecom operators from around the world, including Telecom New Zealand.
The alliance is trying to influence the standards organisations and technology vendors trying to address the issue and to ensure there is global interoperability of the architectural components that will underpin convergence products and services.
Butler Group senior research analyst Mark Blowers has identified Cogent's model of making mobile phones into extensions on the corporate switchboard as a key element in fixed mobile convergence.
Blowers says as many as 30 per cent of mobile calls are actually made from within people's office buildings.
"Integrating mobile phones with the IP telephony infrastructure enables organisations to take advantage of lowest cost routing, significantly reducing international mobile call costs, and providing greater control of overall communication expenditure," Blowers says.
