Mobile centrex and mobile PBX: a niche story

Mobile centrex and mobile PBX: a niche story

Mobile centrex is a useful product which is capable of meeting the needs of a relatively small but not insignificant market segment. This primarily consists of small companies, and small offices of larger companies, which do not already have a significant investment in a PBX or existing centrex solution, and for which the mobility patterns of staff make going ‘mobile-only’ an attractive option.

However, mobile centrex faces many barriers in the marketplace. Some of these are technical, some are organisational and cultural, and some are regulatory. In most markets few of these are insurmountable, but they may be enough to reduce the chances of large-scale adoption.

Perhaps most important, mobile centrex runs counter to the main trends in fixed–mobile convergence (FMC) and in enterprise voice. In both areas, the smart money appears to be on IP, and mobile centrex looks like a TDM technology. Although it is well suited to delivering what many SMEs need now, it appears to be wedded to a technology and a paradigm that is in the process of being replaced. We expect that mobile centrex will remain a niche story.

This is not to say that mobile centrex has no future; we expect to see a re-invented version, perhaps with a new name, and associated with the IMS architecture.

Table of contents

Ovum view

What is mobile centrex?

Wireless/mobile centrex and wireless/mobile PBX
Product landscape

Users

User benefits
Barriers to mobile centrex
The market opportunity for mobile centrex
State of play on mobile centrex

Supplier landscape

Operators
Vendors

The future of mobile centrex services