Wifi/GSM Round up: Orange/Free/Neuf Telecom offers + T-Mobile Announces Launch of UMA, Dual Mode Handsets

Thomas Menguy | October 9, 2006

I’m happy to see that in France we are not anymore a third world country in respect to broadband access, and I really think it is thanks to the ADSL operator Free who is always pushing the envelop for new technologies (triple and even quadruple play, Freebox HD…) followed by the others, forced to play the technology game (orange, neuf, alice and club internet above all).
It is why it is really great seeing new Wifi/GSM telephony offers: Neuf/Cegetel Twin, Orange Unik, and Free offer (some photos of the Free phones).
It is why reading this new from the exellent MobileCrunch was not a surprise:
MobileCrunch » T-Mobile Announces Launch of UMA, Dual Mode Handsets … this seems to be a big trend with wifi expanding quickly at home. The Kineto Wireless white paper is really worth a read to understand the involved technologies. Only the Orange offer seems to be really UMA compliant with a clean handover from Wifi to GSM (but not the other way round…)
The Free approach to give everyone 2 MIMO boxes is really wize: in big citie the Free Wifi coverage will be amazing …
Update: MobileCrunch has post a new article about UMA.