BT chooses Tatara Systems Inc. SIM Authentication technology to form part of a ground-breaking voice-over-WLAN trial in the United Kingdom.

BT is making an aggressive bid to capture marketshare in the dual-mode market for GSM and WiFi. Trial participants will be issued with HP iPAQ 6340 personal digital assistant (PDA) devices, enabled for WLAN and GSM voice connectivity. Initially the trial restricts Wi-Fi access to Adastral Park only but ultimately users will be able to make voice calls over WLAN networks at the office, at home, or at a public hotspot. When out of range of a WLAN network, the user will make voice calls over the standard GSM network.

The Tatara Subscriber Gateway and the Tatara Service Manager Software Developers Kit (SDK), elements of the Tatara Mobile Services Convergence Platform, form a key part of the technology infrastructure that BT is deploying to enable the trial. The Tatara Subscriber Gateway, already installed at BT’s Adastral Park R&D labs at Martlesham Heath, UK, enables trial participants to automatically identify themselves securely to both WLAN and GSM networks through a single subscriber identity module (SIM) card installed within the iPAQ. The connection between the PDA and the Tatara Subscriber Gateway is enabled using Tatara’s SDK, which is installed on the iPAQ device.