VoFi: Wi-Fi Finds Its Voice

Even if they never leave the corporate campus, many employees are business travelers of sorts. They spend much of their time away from their desks and desktop phones--serving customers on retail floors, sitting through marathon meetings in conference rooms, supervising operations at manufacturing plants and walking from one building wing to another.

Users often require constant access to their phones. That's where Voice over Wi-Fi (VoFi) technology comes into play. And by staying on top of the demand for VoFi phones, solution providers can gain the tech advantage.

D-Link phones enable calls from 802.11g or 802.11b wireless networks.

As WLAN solutions become more reliable and secure, many enterprises are opening up to the idea of wireless IP telephony, using VoFi technology. But solution providers need to understand where the technology fits and which handsets best suit their customers.

"It's not always that they necessarily know that they want Wi-Fi for voice, it's that they want better in-building coverage and cheaper costs," says Phil Redman, research vice president at technology consultancy Gartner.

Generally, VoFi makes sense in environments where employees remain local to the corporate campus but spend a lot of time away from their desks--such as in hospitals or retail stores. The technology is also suitable in places where cellular coverage might be weak, such as in large buildings with thick walls or on campuses in remote locations.

"Primarily, health care is the largest sector for [VoFi] right now, and that has to do with a need to try to have a more efficient means of communication," says Phil Solis, principal analyst at Oyster Bay, N.Y.-based ABI Research, which recently issued a comprehensive report on the growing VoFi market. "It's more efficient than getting paged over a [public address] system. With the right VoFi handset, they can get a text message, and that improves efficiency and productivity."

"We've deployed a ton of Voice over Wi-Fi in health-care environments," notes Josh Zenner, wireless solutions specialist at Berbee Information Systems, a Madison, Wis.-based solution provider and subsidiary of CDW. "They can be reachable at any time from anywhere in the building. With doctors or nurses, it really is a life-or-death situation."

To that end, certain handsets are especially suited to certain vertical markets. Cisco Systems, SpectraLink and Vocera Communications make wireless phones with screens that support e-mail, text messaging and integration with paging or alarm systems. (Click here to download a PDF chart that compares offerings, includes features and pricing.)

"What we're finding increasingly is that voice is one of several means of communications [for customers]," says Richard McLeod, director of unified communications at Cisco Systems. "They have a frequent need for IM, a need for voice, a need for status, and a need for access to the corporate directory and corporate e-mail. So the ways that they communicate increase, and having that available in one place with one interface becomes more important."

SpectraLink's NetLink h340 Wireless Telephone is designed especially for hospitals. It has a durable plastic casing, a backlit keypad and a warranty for liquid damage. Vocera's Communications Badge is a tiny clip-on phone that works via voice recognition, a feature suitable for nurses, cashiers and mobile workers.

The hospitality industry is a key area of focus for VoFi implementations, if only because hotels tend to have pervasive Wi-Fi networks.

"Hospitality is an up-and-coming area," Solis says. "Wi-Fi was put in hotels for guest access, but increasingly they're looking at it as a way for employees to use the network."

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