No matter what the size and activity of a company, mobile communications have become an indispensable application in a business environment. Mobility applications directly impact on:

• User productivity
• Customer satisfaction
• Manager visibility of workforce
• Responsiveness.

Now being characterised as the “virtual office” mobility applications either on-site or off-site help create a seamless image of an organisation's availability to respond to their clients.

On-Site
Completely integrated into the telephone system, rich feature-sets are offered across:
• Digitally Enhanced Cordless Telephony (DECT) and Voice over Wireless LAN (VoWLAN) radio base stations
• Professional wireless devices register to the base stations with access features such as the company directory right through to conferencing another caller.

DECT and VoWLAN technologies can be coupled with desktop telephone sets while still retaining a single extension number for ease of use.

• Unified Communications 'soft clients' can be operated on-site or off-site as they operate across IP therefore similar to the cordless telephones the soft client extension becomes another member of the mobility group collecting calls only when logged into the WAN or LAN.

Off-Site
In the past, when stepping outside the office, classic solutions were as simple as a call forward and all calls would be received either on a mobile phone, home phone or inter-state number.
Today's off-site solutions offer far more control over voice conversations including:

• Twinning – ringing an external device concurrently as the desktop phone or cordless handset is called and sending presence information back to the operator so the busy status can be identified
• Advanced mobility – providing the off-site worker the ability to conference, transfer-back, or hold the call from any remote handset, mobile or fixed.

Soft applets have been designed for various mobile devices and PDA’s such as:

• Windows Media 5
• Nokia Symbian S60
• Nokia E Series - E50, E60, E61, E61i, E65, E70.

Off-site devices are more often concealed from the caller's view as “one number service” only ever requires one number to be given out for voice communication.