CMA’s Mobility Forum is led by David Green.  He assembled a cracking agenda for a Members Briefing in late March and was rewarded with a strong turn-out of over 50 delegates (mostly from major corporate enterprises) and some excellent presentations from the likes of Cisco, C&W, The Cloud and HP. 

These events always try to balance insights into the technology with a strong focus on the strategic business issues.  The members always appreciate those presenters who rise above sales-pitch mode and give some honest opinions and real-life feedback from their experience of making things work. 

One theme that emerged from several speakers reflected the growing ubiquity of Wireless LANs and Hot Spots.   So many business people now depend on the availability of Hot Spots and you can be increasingly sure of finding a free or cheap one wherever you’re heading.   

The big exception is when you visit someone else’s office and find that for security reasons the wireless access has been locked down.  This is more than an annoyance for temporary staff and suppliers.   With the Internet now an endemic business tool  it’s almost becoming downright rude to deny business visitors the access needed to do their job.   Or as one wag remarked – rather like holding  a mobility seminar without Internet access for speakers and delegates ! 

Another theme was the ever-widening partnerships and collaborations that are now emerging to deliver all these Hot Spots.  This was illustrated with an example from Oslo where the new partners include an advertising company (all those billboard and bus shelters adding up to 500 extra hotspots) and a mobile broadband service, iBand, opening the possibility for mobile Hot Spots in taxis, buses and on ferries,   The idea of WiFi on your bike may seem far-fetched but when your mobile phone has WiFi and there’s an iBand dual-mode modem in the pannier then who needs to pay for phone calls? 

Fixed-mobile convergence was illustrated by a ‘Telephonetics VIP’ case study featuring Hertfordshire police – a great design to enable the public to phone a landline number and get through directly to the Bobby on the beat.     

But perhaps the most fascinating presentation of the day came from Marie Wold of OnRelay.  This was the first time they’d spoken at a CMA event and they made a huge impression with their MBX service.   Listen up all you PBX resellers out there.   If your customer really wants fixed/mobile convergence then junk all the desk phones and let the mobile take the calls with full PBX functionality on any standard handset.   Who needs to be managing shifts and changes when you can turn the entire world upside down? 

The CMA diary for May includes another Members Briefing – Billing and Telecoms Information Management.  Another star-studded performance is expected.

THe feature was first written for Comms Business magazine - May 2007.  It is also available via the CMA Members' website.