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Low digital mobile Internet penetration coupled with a miserable Data ARPU and unavailability of WiFi means that FMC in the residential segment will take several years in India to take hold, says, Jahangir Raina, co-author of report on "The Impact of FMC on World Telecommunications Markets" published by market research firm iLocus..
Jahangir however sees a potential for FMC in the enterprise segment.
“Like VoIP, FMC is also likely to find some traction in the enterprise environment in India rather than on the resedential side. In many ways VoIP is a pre-requisite for the present generation FMC technology” adds Jahangir .
Jahangir Raina, Director iLocus, who has been following the global telecom market for more than two decade now, in an interaction with Idhries Ahmad of CIOL tracks the history of FMC as a concept and also talks about the global trends in the FMC space and the factors that will drive FMC adoption in the near future
How do you see Fixed Mobile Convergence as a concept being taken up by the service providers?
FMC has been tried before as well. It is not new. Using IN (Intelligent Networking) architecture vendors like Alcatel and service providers like BT tried FMC in nineties. The subscriber could use a DECT based landline connected set while at home and use the same handset while in the cellular cloud. However the project failed. There were no tangible benefits and the technology was not sound. The billing aspect especially was not ironed out properly and there was no value addition apart from voice.
And how has the market dynamics changed today
VoIP changed things a little via WiFi. The present FMC is mostly about WiFi-Cellular convergence. So while if WiFi cloud your calls/sessions are routed via public Internet and while in cellular could they go over GSM/GPRS.
The difference is that the WiFi part has been taken care and VoIP technology is now mature. So the underlying technology is now mature. Billing is not a problem. And you can continue value added sessions (like IM) seamlessly across WiFi and cellular zones.
How do you see Indian telecom market waking up to the FMC
You have to have WiFi enabled dual mode phones and the service provider has to support the service through deployment of FMC client on handset and managing that client through a network FMC server.
Currently there are some trials going on in India. Reliance and Bharti are both trying it out. In Indian however, the data ARPU is miserably low and mobile Internet penetration is in single digit thousands. WiFi is scarce. All these factors mean that FMC in the residential segment will take several years in India to take hold. In the enterprise segment however there is some potential.
Like VoIP, FMC is also likely to find some traction in the enterprise environment mostly in the context of Indian market. In many ways VoIP is a pre-requisite for the present generation FMC technology. So FMC will penetrate in the environments where VoIP is already present.
What are the factors that you see will drive the FMC deployments
VoIP penetration, WiFi penetration, regulation (whether allowing MVNOs or not), handset availability (present WiFi Cellular dual mode handsets are not upto the
standard), advances in VCC standards work within IMS etc What will be the impact of FMC on telecom operators Globally we are seeing a slow take up. Deployments mostly non-IMS based. Cellular operators are in driving seat here but they have a dilemma: if they do it they cannibalize their revenue and if they do not do it then they lose revenues by losing subscribers to FMC providers. So cellular operators not sure what to do and that is delaying things.
And on the Indian side
I have heard both Bharti and Reliance are trailing. But they will most probably not offer this in the residential segment. In the enterprise segment, system integrators are better equipped to offer FMC.
What do you think are the challenges in deploying FMC architecture?
On the enterprise side, FMC solution is most likely to be owned by the enterprise, and not within a hosted environment. And that adds to the complexity of managing the communications infrastructure.
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