OnRelay hopes it's onto something by bridging mobiles with corporate phones

- Gary Thayer, Editor

June 13, 2005 -- (MobileVillage) -- At Nokia's annual Nokia Connection conference being held today, UK-based OnRelay announced MBX, a pure-software platform that integrates a corporate voice system (PBX) and all its surrounding business support systems with employees' 3G/GSM smartphones.

The MBX software integrates with mobile devices based on open systems such as Nokia Series 60. MBX leverages OnRelay's patented Telephony Internetworking Protocol (TINP) technology, and works anywhere in the world over a standard 3G, GSM or CDMA connection, according to OnRelay co-founder Marie Wold.

The software is also fully functional when roaming, and integrates into both IP and TDM PBXs from vendors such as Nortel, Cisco, Avaya and Siemens, according to Wold.

MBX allows corporate users to place and receive calls from both their personal mobile number and their corporate office number using a single integrated mobile device. Business users can at any time choose to place a call either via their personal mobile phone or their office phone. Both outgoing and incoming business calls look to customers - and to internal IT systems - as having been placed/received on the actual desk phone, according to OnRelay.

MBX also enables separate management and billing of personal and business calls, whereby for instance flexible workers can turn 'off' their office phone, while leaving the personal mobile phone turned on. For the end-user, all of this is managed on the mobile phone user interface itself and there is no need to configure the service from a PC.

Because MBX can extend all PBX functionality to a mobile phone, MBX can also function as a complete deskphone replacement, such that the mobile phone becomes the employee's only PBX extension, without loss of function or bypass of any corporate call management capabilities, says OnRelay.

Other features of MBX include:

• voice recording system integration for recording both mobile outgoing and incoming calls;
• caller ID and caller name for incoming calls routed via the PBX;
• ad-hoc PBX conferencing; and
• no reduction of functionality when roaming.

MBX also integrates with the corporate directory (LDAP) and allows click-to-dial directory lookup on the mobile. MBX further adds presence information so that users can see the status and location of colleagues.

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