RIM plans Wi-Fi/cell phone BlackBerry

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May 25, 2007 (IDG News Service) -- Research In Motion Ltd. expects to start selling a BlackBerry with both cellular and Wi-Fi wireless capabilities, the company's CEO said Wednesday.

Speaking at the JPMorgan Technology Conference, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said such a converged BlackBerry should come out "in the back half of this year."

RIM is lagging behind its competitors in developing devices with both cellular and Wi-Fi.

Motorola Inc. and Nokia Corp. were both selling phones with Wi-Fi and cellular aimed at business users last year. RIM had recently hinted at forthcoming converged phones, but until this week, the company hadn't said when they would ship.

"Wi-Fi was overhyped," Balsillie said. "I was not a big believer in it for the first two or three years because it was hyped as something that would subsume everything, that you would get rid of your cell phone. We feel it's complementary of a cell phone."

The BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) that companies use to deliver corporate e-mail to BlackBerry users already supports roaming for customers that travel between multiple operators, so the BES would treat Wi-Fi networks just like additional cellular networks, he said. That capability enables the handoff of data connections and voice calls between Wi-Fi and cellular networks as customers move.

In addition, the BES "presupposes the airlink is insecure," and so it encrypts all voice and data transmissions using either technology, Balsillie said. The BES already supports Wi-Fi connections because the BlackBerry 7270 has Wi-Fi.

Many mobile operators, particularly those that aren't related to a land-line service provider, have resisted fixed mobile convergence (FMC) because they can lose revenue by transferring calls from their cellular networks to a potential competitor's Wi-Fi network. But Balsillie said the operators are open to it. "Most of the carriers I've dealt with are supportive of FMC," he said.

Also, Balsillie said he's finding that an increasing number of operators have both cellular and fixed-line networks and those companies are looking for strategic ways to leverage both assets. Services like FMC can allow those operators to offer a value-added service rather than simply offering a single bill.

Reprinted with permission from

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Story copyright 2008 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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