I’ve browsed a couple of minutes looking for an English version of this article, but unsuccessfully.
Anyway what’s relevant here is that Tiscali and Nokia partnered to provide a new service, called Homezone, in Italy.
The approach is simple and somehow not-so-new, anyway it is an actual implementation from two giants of Telecommunications and in my opinion must be followed with attention.
How does it work?
Tiscali customers with ADSL and VoIP have a geographic number associated with their lines. With Homezone, while under WiFi coverage, users can place and receive calls with their Tiscali numbers using their Nokia E series mobile phones (E61, E61i, E65). These are dual mode phones with an embedded SIP client (I wrote about it before).
The set of supported mobile phones is perhaps too restrictive, but prices for dual mode phones are going down and this will help the service in taking off.
A final point: keep in mind that if you know a SIP provider with geographic numbers provisioning you can do this by yourself, without any need for Tiscali or a specific telephone company…
