Bright Idea of the Month - Onephone

BT has started trialling a service that should let you replace the phone on your desk and the one in your pocket with a single handset and a single number.

The picture shows Tim Smart, General Manager of BT Mobility Solutions, allegedly using a Onephone. Note the way the small, elegant unit comfortably fits his hand; and to judge by the smile, it's good to talk.

The phone combines Dect and GSM, both of which will be tested in the trials in Uxbridge and Hemel Hempstead. Extra sites in central London and Leeds will follow.

The first phase of the actual service will use Dect only handsets, sometime before the end of the year, but customers will be given the chance to try out prototypes of the Dect/GSM phones BT is using in its in-house trials.

Phase II, developed by BT and Ericsson, will follow in summer 1998, when users should be able to make and receive calls on a single handset, whether they are in the office or out. The idea is that the Onephone service will use fixed networks where it can, switching to GSM only when it has to - that approach is intended to keep costs down and deliver the best line quality available. Users will still be able to choose which mobile and fixed network supplier to patronise.

The Mobility Solutions Group was set up in December last year. Its first initiative was BT Onenumber, a UK-based personal number service, at the end of 1996 which went international in June. Last month it added Onefax, which allows users to divert all fax messages to any given machine and store or retrieve them at will.