Understanding Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA).
Bill Day commented on the release of the UMA technology specifications by Nokia, BT, Motorola, O2, T-Mobile, Cingular and others. What does it mean? It's a technology that allows mobile phones to automatically switch from public cellular networks onto private networks based on WiFi and Bluetooth technologies. (WiFi and Bluetooth are both use unlicensed spectrum, hence the U in UMA).
In practice: when you're in the office, your mobile phone could use your company network for telephony, fast data access, and cost savings; when you're out of the office, the phone will switch to a standard cellular radio network.
From a technology perspective, it will be interesting to see which parts of the network infrastructure the operators open up. The more they open, the more services can be accessed from inside any business.
Currently, this is a specification which will need to be approved before it becomes part of 3G.
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