Convergence of Landline & Mobile Phone: Nothing Stopping Us Now?

A new white paper published by the industry group 3G Americas gives a big plug to fixed-mobile convergence (meaning merging of landlines and mobile phones). Chris Pearson, president of the group, says that seamless wireless/wired services will be “nothing short of revolutionary” when they come to market. By 2012, the total number of fixed mobile subscribers in the Americas will be 271 million, according to the research, conducted by ABI.

The research notes that even if people have talked about FMC for some time, it is only now that all the important tech pieces have been put into place to make services a reality. These include SIP, Voice over IP (VoIP), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), and fixed and wireless broadband. One technology that ABI notes will play a major role in FMC in the future are Femtocells. Femtocell-based solutions will account for 56% of all FMC offerings, with 24% and 20% respectively for UMA and VCC/SIP. “2007 and 2008 represent the incubation period for what is expected to be a rapidly growing market which will hit its inflection point in 2009.” That’s the technology Google invested in, by the way, recently.

But although the U.S. market has only just now started to see its first FMC products –most recently T-Mobile’s Hotspot@ Home — those that have been around for a while have yet to gain massive traction. In the U.K. BT Fusion, which was launched in 2005, reported 40,000 customers in June 2007 (no improvement over April 2007, according to Connected Home News), versus over 3 million for its broadband products and tens of millions for its fixed phone service.

And even if there are potentially great possibilities in what FMC could mean to the entertainment industry, the white paper also makes note of some of the obstacles that may still lie on that path, including the ongoing struggle between content companies and operators over who gets control of the customer relationship.

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