FEATURE: Fixed Mobile Convergence: Opportunity or Threat?

The array of telecoms services and networks now available to users bears little resemblance to that of just two years ago. With the new era of bundled services, traditional operators, mobile operators and internet service providers find themselves competing in the same markets; a natural progression of this is the emergence of fixed and mobile telephony convergence.

Fixed mobile convergence, the integration of mobile terminal into a fixed network, has been a much talked about subject over the last year and the first services for residential and business users have already been deployed in Europe by "early innovator" mobile operators and Internet service providers.

Mobile operators may can look at this in one of two ways--either as a potential threat to their ARPU or as a win-win solution for both provider and client where they can deliver full services on mobile phones while improving customer loyalty and reducing expenditure through migration to IP. Migrating to IP means they will have the possibility to offer unlimited telephony and services without saturating mobile infrastructure and compete against broadband telephony providers and non-subscriber providers such as Skype.

Convergence for business--a logical continuation
The business sector has a significantly higher ARPU than the residential market and business users are eager for features that will improve efficiency and reduce costs. This makes the Mobile IP Centrex market an attractive target for mobile operators. Many enterprise users are already using VoIP to reduce costs and streamline network management. The idea of a Mobile IP Centrex to deliver hosted telephony services with full features on both mobile and fixed handsets is the logical continuation.

The home user
The home user's key criteria for service selection are reduced billing and transparency of use. In the residential market, operators can now offer combined fixed and mobile services, to create new opportunities for increased ARPU and reduced customer churn. Mobile operators can deploy fixed broadband services to meet all the needs of their subscribers. Fixed operators can leverage their MVNO license and promote personal phone devices for people to use anywhere and win back traffic lost to mobile operators. In both cases, a bundled package will offer subscribers more competitive and easier to use services with unique innovative features.

Forward-thinking telcos and internet service providers are viewing convergence as a way to reduce customer churn by introducing new sticky service bundles. Many think that a converged IMS architecture is the way to go for delivering such feature. Although IMS is definitely where networks should and will go, operators cannot afford to wait.

We foresee the trend will be for operators to deploy flexible softswitches with powerful GSM capabilities to leverage the existing mobile infrastructure and some pre-IMS components to handle seamless VoIP mobility. Quick time-to-market is key to the bottom line. Deploying a full-blown IMS architecture that works and can manage millions of subscribers will come over time.

Fabian Maisel is marketing director at Cirpack.