Nokia, the world leader in mobile communications, and Kineto Wireless, the key innovator and leading global supplier of UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) technology, today announced an agreement to address the area of convergence between fixed and mobile networks and services in selected key customer cases. In addition, the companies are currently engaged in UMA trials with major operators and will continue to collaborate on future network trials.

Under the terms of the agreement, Nokia will incorporate Kineto's UMA Network Controller into its network convergence solutions for wireline and wireless operators. As part of the multi-access solutions, this complements other elements in Nokia's powerful end-to-end network convergence offering, which includes the Nokia Unified Core Network for common service machinery, Operations Support Services (OSS), multimedia services, service and network integration, as well as world-class mobile devices.

UMA, a 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Program) standard, is an access technology that allows a seamless handoff of mobile voice and data from a wide area cellular network to a wireless local area network (WLAN). The UMA standard defines how mobile operators can turn home, office and public wireless LANs into seamless extensions of their cellular networks. With UMA, operators can deliver high-performance, low-cost mobile voice, data and IMS services to subscribers over the broadband Wi-Fi access networks, dramatically increasing mobile service usage while decreasing costs for operators.

"Nokia's end-to-end convergence solutions - from network equipment to terminals to applications - aim to enhance the end-user's mobile voice and data experiences as simply as possible," said Pekka Viirola, director, Convergence Network Systems, Networks, Nokia. "By this cooperation, both companies can join forces to establish a winning solution to the emerging market for comprehensive solutions that yield operational cost savings to communications providers."

"With the rapid adoption of UMA as a 3GPP standard for cellular/Wi-Fi convergence, we are seeing tremendous demand for UMA products and services from operators," said Rick Gilbert, president and CEO of Kineto. "As a leading global supplier of mobile and convergence solutions, Nokia is an ideal partner for growing this market."

Previously, Nokia announced that Saunalahti, a leading Finnish operator will be deploying a number of Nokia's convergence solutions, including UMA technology from Kineto, to offer services like VoIP and rich multimedia to both mobile and fixed telephony customers.

The Nokia fixed mobile convergence vision embraces personalization and mobility - where end-users have their own services on their preferred end-user devices over any network. Nokia sees that there are two key access technologies for operators to implement this vision - UMA and Native IP Access. Nokia supports both alternatives.