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I have now been a customer of
BT
Fusion for just over a month, so I felt it was time I wrote a
review.
Firstly a little background information for those who do not know what BT Fusion is.
Originally called the Bluephone the intention was to create a mobile phone that would route your calls (at landline rates) through your home phone when you were in range of an access point. The phone was originally intended to use Bluetooth, but as this has a limited range the decision was clearly made at some point to use Wireless LAN technology.
This is basically the same technology that your wireless laptop or PDA uses.
When you are at home, your phone calls go out through your internet connection, and when you are out of range of your wireless router the calls are routed through the GSM network. (The GSM Network is the standard mobile network).
Now the really clever bit is in the handover, if you come in range of your router (or indeed go out of range of it) the phone will switch your call over to the relevant network (through your router if you have come in range, to the GSM network if you are out of range.)
This handover is
intended to be seamless.
The price of the phone was one that I like very much - Free! - but is of course tied to an 18 month contract. The line rental on the package I have chosen is £20 a month, however this has free texts bundled as well as free minutes. I have also added on an extra 50 texts for £3 a month.
It's worth noting that if I am at home, or in a BTOpenzone my free minutes are worth 4 times as much.
The phone I chose (Nokia 6136) is quite attractive (though i am not a fan of Nokia), it runs the Java framework so I can run most Java applications on there. The phone supports GPRS and can also access the internet through my router when I am at home. This brings me 8MB internet in the palm of my hand. (I do normally use the computer all the same).
The changeover between WLAN and GSM networks is indeed seamless, the only way I seem to notice a handover is when I
look at the screen and see that the network has changed.
Call quality is especially high, even when the calls are tunneled through VOIP. Although VOIP can use a lot of bandwidth, BT do not charge you for the Bandwidth used by your Fusion Mobile.
When not at home the GPRS on the phone does tend to be a little slow, but this may be a characteristic of the phone that I have selected rather than the network.
The all important signal strength for the GSM network is astounding. I have yet to see the signal strength appear more than two blocks below full, I do travel to some fairly remote locations, but there always appears to be signal.
All in all I am very impressed with BT Fusion, I would heartily recommend it. The one thing that held me back was the concept of getting a contract phone, but call charges are cheaper and when I registered there was a 3 months free line rental deal on. I also got an amount of free GPRS usage, whether I have exceeded that will show on my next bill!
Firstly a little background information for those who do not know what BT Fusion is.
Originally called the Bluephone the intention was to create a mobile phone that would route your calls (at landline rates) through your home phone when you were in range of an access point. The phone was originally intended to use Bluetooth, but as this has a limited range the decision was clearly made at some point to use Wireless LAN technology.
This is basically the same technology that your wireless laptop or PDA uses.
When you are at home, your phone calls go out through your internet connection, and when you are out of range of your wireless router the calls are routed through the GSM network. (The GSM Network is the standard mobile network).
Now the really clever bit is in the handover, if you come in range of your router (or indeed go out of range of it) the phone will switch your call over to the relevant network (through your router if you have come in range, to the GSM network if you are out of range.)
This handover is
intended to be seamless.The price of the phone was one that I like very much - Free! - but is of course tied to an 18 month contract. The line rental on the package I have chosen is £20 a month, however this has free texts bundled as well as free minutes. I have also added on an extra 50 texts for £3 a month.
It's worth noting that if I am at home, or in a BTOpenzone my free minutes are worth 4 times as much.
The phone I chose (Nokia 6136) is quite attractive (though i am not a fan of Nokia), it runs the Java framework so I can run most Java applications on there. The phone supports GPRS and can also access the internet through my router when I am at home. This brings me 8MB internet in the palm of my hand. (I do normally use the computer all the same).
The changeover between WLAN and GSM networks is indeed seamless, the only way I seem to notice a handover is when I
look at the screen and see that the network has changed.Call quality is especially high, even when the calls are tunneled through VOIP. Although VOIP can use a lot of bandwidth, BT do not charge you for the Bandwidth used by your Fusion Mobile.
When not at home the GPRS on the phone does tend to be a little slow, but this may be a characteristic of the phone that I have selected rather than the network.
The all important signal strength for the GSM network is astounding. I have yet to see the signal strength appear more than two blocks below full, I do travel to some fairly remote locations, but there always appears to be signal.
All in all I am very impressed with BT Fusion, I would heartily recommend it. The one thing that held me back was the concept of getting a contract phone, but call charges are cheaper and when I registered there was a 3 months free line rental deal on. I also got an amount of free GPRS usage, whether I have exceeded that will show on my next bill!
