Fixed Mobile Substitution, usually abbreviated to FMS, is the use of a

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

(cellular phone) instead of a fixed, wired, POTS telephone. Although strictly, this could simply be as the result of a subscriber making an individual choice (for example, "25% of the population of

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

do not have a fixed phone, but use mobiles all the time, even at home"), the term is usually used to describe a deliberate tactic of a carrier to promote such a behavior. One such technique is the use of "homezones" (where calls on a designated cell, covering the subscriber's home, are at a preferential tariff, or even free). Although very popular with subscribers, and delivering good uptake, these are expensive for carriers, and outside of a few specific countries (e.g.

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

with Genion and Zu Hause services) they are not common. The use of

femtocell In telecommunications, a femtocell is a small, low-power cellular base station, typically designed for use in a home or small business. A broader term which is more widespread in the industry is ''small cell'', with ''femtocell'' as a subset. It c ...

s promises to be a more attractive (and potentially more profitable) approach. The term FMS is in contrast to Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC), which is usually used to describe the use of two different technologies (hence "convergence") to deliver a similar user experience. Examples include the use of dual-mode handsets with both cellular and

WiFi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves ...

technologies and hand-off between the two.

References

{{Reflist Telephony