Tucked into the press release on Cisco's new Mobile Services Architecture is this line:

Mobile Intelligent Roaming facilitates seamless handoff of dual-mode mobile devices between Wi-Fi and cellular networks based on availability, real-time network information and user location.

Tucked into the press release on Cisco's new Mobile Services Architecture is this line:

Mobile Intelligent Roaming facilitates seamless handoff of dual-mode mobile devices between Wi-Fi and cellular networks based on availability, real-time network information and user location.

I'm not sure where this wording came from, but it requires clarification. The Mobile Intelligent Roaming service, which in six or nine months will run on Cisco's Mobile Services Engine appliance, facilitates no network handoffs whatsoever. This is the case whether "facilitate" is defined as "make possible" or "help, assist." Once Mobile Intelligent Roaming is made available, Cisco will remain completely dependent on third-parties whose solutions do all the legwork in handing off calls from WiFi to cellular networks and back again.

What Mobile Intelligent Roaming provides is a set of APIs for these third parties to hook their solutions into. Agito Networks is the first to announce plans to utilize these APIs. Nokia will apparently follow, presumably after it upgrades its Intellisync solution with the automatic handoff capabilities that it presently lacks. Cisco expects other partners - including cellular operators offering dual-mode services, handset manufacturers, and FMC gateway developers - to follow.

So for now, Cisco's dual-mode solution remains what it has always been: Nokia Intellisync Call Connect, which supports Nokia dual-mode phones but requires end users to switch between networks manually by pressing a button on the handset. Alternately, Cisco customers can deploy an Agito Networks solution, which - here and now, without any need for Cisco Motion, Cisco Mobile Services Engine, or Cisco Mobile Intelligent Roaming - supports automatic handoffs between networks based on user location and signal strength.

When Mobile Intelligent Roaming is released, this same Agito solution can be used but, thanks to information about the Cisco wireless network fed to the Agito software via the APIs, the system can make a more intelligent determination when to trigger a handoff. The Mobile Intelligent Roaming software may, for instance, determine that the nearest access point is overloaded with other wireless devices and based on this info defer a handoff from the cellular network to a letter time.

Alternately, businesses can deploy MobileConnect from Siemens Enterprise Communications, the Aastra Enterprise Mobility Gateway, or one of the other dual-mode telephony solutions that - once again, here and now - deliver seamless handoffs in a multivendor PBX environment. They may not be able to take advantage of these new Cisco APIs, but - as the folks at Agito told me recently - businesses deploying dual-mode FMC technology today have not complained about handoff issues. It remains to be seen if all this information on network performance is really all that necessary.