RIM announced BlackBerry MVS 5 with voice over Wi-Fi calling.

Research In Motion Limited (RIM) today announced BlackBerry Mobile Voice System 5 (BlackBerry MVS 5) with voice over Wi-Fi calling. The BlackBerry MVS 5 works with Cisco Unified Communications Manager, it allow users to use their regular desk phone number and extension from their BlackBerry Smartphone. In this new version, an employee will be able to use a single work phone number shared between their desk phone and BlackBerry Smartphone and make and receive calls on their BlackBerry Smartphone over a Wi-Fi connection.

“BlackBerry Mobile Voice System 5 effectively provides a wireless extension of the corporate phone system to allow voice over Wi-Fi calling at work, public hotspots and home. It presents a great opportunity for companies to enhance the productivity of employees who are often away from their desks or working from home, such as workers in construction, hospitality, sales and professional services,” said Alan Panezic, VP, Platform Product Management atResearch In Motion. “This latest release enables businesses to better leverage theirinvestment in the corporate phone system, adapt to the growing demand by employees for more flexible work arrangements, improve workforce productivity and save costs on long-distance and international roaming charges.”

Laurent Philonenko, vice president and general manager, Unified Communications Business Unit at Cisco said, “BlackBerry Mobile Voice System and Cisco Unified Communications Manager provide and extend Cisco’s IP telephony features to BlackBerry smartphone users at companies of any size. With an integrated Cisco Unified Wireless Network, our customers will be able to have highly secure voice over Wi-Fi experiences and high quality phone calls with their BlackBerry smartphones while roaming across the wireless network.”

Many companies offer ‘Work From Home’ policy for their employees and to keep their staff accessible through their work phone number as well as to reduce calling costs. With BlackBerry MVS 5, calls made through BlackBerry MVS are routed through the corporate phone system/Private Branch Exchange (PBX) which saves long-distance and international roaming charges. with this solution, company as well as employee also get benefit of this system. Employee gets convenience of extension dialing from their BlackBerry smartphone as well as the flexibility to move calls from their BlackBerry smartphone to their desk phone.

Advanced features of BlackBerry MVS 5:

• Wi-Fi network access controls to set which Wi-Fi networks employees can access
• Network preference settings with the option of prioritizing the use of Wi-Fi or cellular for making phone calls
• Authentication to help ensure that only authorized BlackBerry smartphones have access to the corporate phone system
• Incoming call filtering based on allowed and blocked caller lists