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| We are process of evaluation and will conceptualize the FMC offering says Bharti spokesman |
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| Bharti Airtel Limited, one of Indias leading private sector providers of telecommunications, is one among the very few service operators in India who seems to be serious about rolling out its FMC offering . Bharti Airtel Limited, one of Indias leading private sector providers of telecommunications, has joined FMCA (Fixed-Mobile Convergence Alliance) in November 2006 to share knowledge of Convergence developments and launches. In an interaction with Idhries Ahmad, spokesman Bharti though, noncommittal about the time frame for Bharti FMC rollout, did talk about how Bharti looks at FMC space |
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What are the steps taken by Bharti to make Fixed Mobile Convergence possible?
Currently Airtel is in discussion with the solution providers to understand the capabilities of FMC offering to arrive at a right value proposition to the customers. Technology evaluation for delivering fixed mobile convergence (FMC) including both network portion and testing of dual mode handsets is under way. In order to realize this offering several initiatives are being discussed and some of them include promotion of WiFi routers for broadband customers, Creation of WiFi hot-spots and zones in strategic locations like Airports, malls etc..
What's Bhati's roadmap to achieve it within a certain limit?
As mentioned earlier, we are now in the process of evaluation and shortly will conceptualize the service offering for Indian market. This is being planned for during this year. Subsequently, we will showcase the same to understand the user experience and gather user feedback to fine tune the product offering. Still there is a long way to go for achieving launch readiness in terms of technology maturity, user awareness, product packaging etc..
What's the state of Indian telecom Industry now and what kind of change FMC will be bringing ?
The Indian Telecom industry is witnessing explosive growth in the mobile segment whereas the fixed network shows signs of a negative growth with falling customer base and ARPU figures. Also, this year being announced as the Year of Broadband we shall witness significant growth in broadband user base as well which is very essential to catalyse the service providers to look at FMC offerings.
At this point of time, FMC looks very promising to both wireless & wireline networks as explained below :
FMC can help reduce churn in wireline networks as now users can have seamless connectivity with the network, with their dual mode handsets that can hook on to Wi Fi and GSM networks. Calls can be routed both over the broadband network & on the mobile network depending on the location of the user at that particular point of time. This in turn will help the mobile network operators in decongesting their mobile networks by offloading some traffic on the fixed networks. This will result in more efficient utilization of the spectrum resources (that is quite stretched today) for handling additional mobile calls (voice/data) and/or provide better network experience.
How is the common customer to get benefited by your FMC offering?
The following benefits are being envisaged for the users adopting FMC services
- Seamless connectivity at home, on the move and in the office.
- Single device and number for fixed and mobile services using a Dual mode handset
- Local calls within the premises can be at lower tariffs as now resources are not utilized in the mobile network.
- Better user experience for both voice & data services.
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IBM developerWorks
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