BT gives Fusion the flick

BT has stopped selling its Fusion VoIP-over-WiFi phone, at least as far as consumers are concerned. Launched with great fanfare two years ago, the concept of a phone which seamlessly hooked into either a WiFi or Cellular network, but was then transported across the Internet at much reduced rates, seemed a winner.

But only three manufacturers ever took up the UMA technology that drives the interoperability and BT now admits selling the Fusion against cheap, fully featured cell phones has been a struggle. Only 45,000 were sold and yesterday BT said it was going back to the drawing board and was looking to relaunch the Fusion with a BlackBerry-style keyboard interface made by Taiwan's HTC. Fusion Mark II is only to be marketed to businesses. The Fusion phone was just the latest of many not-yet-commercially successful attempts to use hot-spot technology in the U.K. for telephony. 

For more:
- BT to relaunch Fusion phone Article [1]
- BT stops marketing of Fusion Article [2]
- Om Malik predicted Fusion would flop Article [3]

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