T-Mobile International has hired Nortel Networks and Azaire Networks to help upgrade the carrier's wireless core network in Europe with new capabilities for bridging the operator's commercial UMTS wireless network with Wi-Fi networks to provide seamless roaming communications for subscribers.

This fixed/mobile convergence capability is being demonstrated at CeBit 2006 in Hanover, according to a statement from Nortel announcing the deal. T-Mobile will offer the new service to enterprise customers using laptops and dual-mode PDAs, such as the T-Mobile MDA Pro, beginning this summer, the statement said.

To support the service, Nortel's Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN) has been integrated with Azaire Networks' IP Converged Network Platform (IP-CNP). Azaire's IP-CNP provides an integrated hybrid network by extending the services from the existing 3G and GSM core network investments over new access technologies like Wi-Fi and WiMAX, according to Jim Grams, chief technology officer at Azaire, who also is a former technology executive from Cingular Wireless, and before that AT&T Wireless.

"Wi-Fi has created a wrinkle in the mobile data expansion process," Grams told Telephony recently. "At Cingular, we used to wring our hands about this--do you fight Wi-Fi or do you embrace it? Carriers need to try to embrace as many access networks as possible, and focus on maintaining a high-touch relationship with the customer and offering these networks as if they were your own. Then, bring as much of this traffic back to the mobile core as possible."

With this deployment, T-Mobile customers will be able to use multiple access technologies while preserving key cellular service benefits such as SIM card-based authentication, secure roaming, integrated accounting and billing and seamless mobility, according to the Nortel statement

The packet core network agreement is incremental to previous GPRS and UMTS core contract awards by T-Mobile to Nortel, the vendor said. Nortel has been a supplier of GPRS and 3G wireless networking equipment for T-Mobile's Pan-European network since 2002, and currently supplies packet core networking equipment in Germany, the U.K., Czech Republic, The Netherlands, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria.