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FMC deployments happening around the world
Globally service providers have slowly stated waking to the concept of fixed mobile convergence
FMC deployments are already happening and there are operators in Western Europe, USA are doing field trails before they roll out commercially.
Countries like Korea are doing trials of Wireless Broadband (Wibro) which will enable convergence.
Chief Marketing Officer, South Asia, Alcatel-Lucent A. Sethuraman, says that for some service providers, the boundaries between fixed and mobile operations are blurring. “To a large extent, this comes from the search for new sources of revenue to compensate for revenue loss in their traditional market segment, and from end users (especially business users) looking for a unified solution for all their telecom needs: fixed, mobile voice (and video), and also data connectivity” says Sethuram.
“Today, combined operators (operators with both fixed and mobile assets) are operating their fixed and mobile operations as separate businesses. This is starting to change, as e.g. FT/Orange and AT&T/BellSouth/Cingular are looking to integrate organization and service offers, driven by the challenge of responding to end–user expectations and reducing costs”
BT started it Fusion which can be considered as one of the first really converged service offers. But given the assets and business configurations of combined operators, it is clear that it is only a matter of time before they will try to find innovative ways to tie their services together.
Mobile operators are focused on fixed substitution, whilst extending their service portfolio by introducing DSL (Orange/Cable & Wireless, Mobistar, Vodafone).
Azaire Networks which has been among the earliest venodros to jump the FMC bandwagon haqs has been working with many several operators in North America, Europe, and Asia, and includes T-Mobile, SingTel Optus, Rogers Wireless, Chunghwa Telecom, and Mobilkom Austria.
The company has been doing deployments with T-Mobile (Germany) for first European wireless service to include uninterrupted service across 3G, GPRS/EDGE & WiFi networks
In China, Azaire has been working with . Chunghwa (Taiwan) for its 3G walled garden services (music, video) give data users complete service parity between 3G & WLAN with seamless integration into Chunghwa’s 3G packet core network.
Drawing an pattern to the global deployments Tom Hussey, CTO, Azaire Networks says the Residential FMC market has been very well served in Europe by the likes of Orange and T-Mobile from the mobile side, with FT and BT offering solutions on the fixed side.
It has been clear that success has come to those that understand user requirements, communicate the benefits and market the offering and retail aspects properly. Enterprise success has not been widespread but some wireless operators have been able to market hosted Centrex only to the SMB space with some success. RIM has captured the large enterprise data market, while not offering PBX synergies nor relief from cellular roaming on the voice side. “
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