One number portability, the ultimate objective

Fixed mobile telephony convergence, better known as FMC, is buzzing with a lot of debate and delirium in India. The technology enables to provide both wireline and wireless services with a single phone. It is the way to connect the mobile phone to the fixed line infrastructure, thus enabling telecom operators to provide services to users irrespective of their location, access technology, and terminal. Vivek Tuljapurkar, managing director, R&D at Avaya, interacted at length with Pratima Harigunani of CyberMedia News to share his observations on the unfolding act of FMC in India where he touches interesting challenges, upticks like spectrum optimization, VoIP and downticks like FMS, Wi-Fi and legacy issues for this technology. Tuljapurkar is a formidable name in business communications applications and systems.

Is the current status of Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) in India exciting enough?

Analysts predict that over the next three years, FMC will be one of the strongest trends in telecommunications given the fact that the Indian telecom market is entering a critical period of change and development. Currently, an increasing number of partnerships and collaborations between traditionally separated fixed and mobile operators is being observed and the new Unified Access Licensing Regime, (which permits an operator to provide Fixed, Mobile and Broadband services under a single license), is a fundamental enabler of FMC. It can partially ease the radio spectrum congestion and revitalize the fixed telephony market.

How soon can we expect a full-throttle take-off?

Taking these developments into account, FMC looks very promising to both wireless and wireline networks in India – especially in the enterprise segment. In the consumer segment however, it will take some years to take hold due to the unavailability of WiFi. Also, 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 and will drive the adoption of next generation handsets, such as the dual mode handsets (those that have both GSM and WiFi) will be able to access the Internet seamlessly.

Since, calls can be routed both over the broadband network and on the mobile network depending on the location of the user at that particular point of time, users will experience continued connectivity. This 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 for handling additional mobile calls and provide better network experience.

Will this action be felt commercially as well?

As far as the future of FMC in India is concerned, most of the major operators in India are expected to have commercial launches of some form of converged communication within the next 12 to 18 months. Operators with both fixed and mobile assets are best positioned to offer converged user–centric broadband services across fixed and mobile access.

To leverage their position successfully, they will need to rethink their service and network architecture and their operational practices. However, there are some operators who prefer to take a cautious approach in launching these services so as to avoid cannibalization of existing revenues.

What ripples, if any, will this have for ecosystems and technology in the mobile industry?

The convergence of fixed and mobile networks means that telco operators can provide services to users irrespective of their location, access technology, and terminal, hence reaching all potential customers with all types of services. Hence, FMC is going to trigger restructuring and changes in the business structure and network infrastructure of carriers and will threaten some legacy services, while at the same time creating new opportunities for fixed and mobile carriers to compete in each other's spaces.

New technologies such as IPTV, mobile TV, location-aware and context aware functions, WiMAX, mesh networking, peer-to-peer computing, software defined radio equipment, IPv6 upgrades to the internet equipment, and multi-mode mobile devices will place new demands on the IT infrastructure in terms of storage requirements, billing, customer care, decision support, and IP-based applications.

And do you think, our regulatory babus are encouraging enough?

Regulatory bodies at their end are taking active measures to incorporate convergence-based networks and services into the regulatory framework and the new Unified Access Licensing Regime as I mentioned earlier is a fundamental enabler of FMC.

Will this be an IMS (IP Multimedia System)* - FMC roll-over?

Every major service provider is expected to have commercial launches of some form of converged communication within the next 12 months. Though these launches will not be strictly under the banner of FMC, the service providers have begun pilot trials with IMS which serves as a foundation stone for the FMC services. Service providers may start with Pre-IMS services which could mainly be applications like Instant Messaging and Photo Sharing, skip UMA and jump to IMS directly. Let’s not forget though that the successful adoption of FMC also depends on deployment of 3G and Wi-Fi.

Any other market factors that may affect FMC?

Some market barriers in the adoption of FMC are perceived complexity of FMC service, lack of dual-mode handsets, QoS (Quality of Service) concerns in the FMC space and lack of optimum data bandwidth users receive through cellular networks. Also, fixed and mobile networks still exist as independent silos in various markets. Besides that highly variable and skewed fixed line, broadband and mobile penetration rates across the region, can lead to varied growth strategies.

Can the Indian FMC industry borrow any lessons from its international counterparts?

One of the biggest hurdles concerning deployment of FMC, especially in the European markets is the emergence of FMS (Fixed-Mobile substitution). This strategy is being used by the mobile operators to re-route more fixed traffic over their mobile networks. Easy of deployment and wide range of operability makes FMS a stiff challenge to FMC in the resident segment.

As FMC is still in its infancy in India it is possible to decide on a common ground where there could be symbiotic relation between the two technologies and with time FMS can give way to FMC. This might help to reduce the time and cost for the development of FMC in India as well as avoid unwanted competition between the two technologies. We believe India can benefit more through co-operation than competition.

Any interesting FMC pilots that you can share here?

Avaya’s Extension to Cellular (EC500) is one of the first FMC products to hit the market. EC500 allows enterprises to connect their IP telephony platform to the cellular as well as internal wireless network. To cut the long story short, no mater where you are we ensure you don’t miss out on any important business call. We have successfully deployed and are using this feature in all the Avaya establishments in India.

Regarding the One-X mobile edition, we haven’t deployed it in India yet, but we have collaborations with various American universities where we have deployed them on trial basis. These deployments helps user to get a better feel of the technology and helps us to ensure that the product lives up to its quality standards. We would be deploying them in our establishments in India very soon.

How complete is Avaya’s basket for FMC at this point and what's the action expected ahead?

Avaya is currently working on Extension to Cellular application (EC500) 7.0 that supports dual mode functionality allowing enterprises to connect their IP telephony platform to the cellular network as well as to the internal Wireless LAN’s with seamless connectivity. Avaya’s one-x mobile edition currently supports single/dual mode handsets from Nokia with Symbian Operating System and phones/PDA’s with Windows Mobile 5 Operating System.

Other new features in EC500 7.1 will have Multi-Location features, which will allow a Multi-country switch to have Avaya one-X Mobile users to be present at all locations with a single CM. Avaya is also exploring least cost routing (LCR) feature. Additionally, we are also working on call recording and call accounting capabilities of Avaya Communications Manager-based telephony extended to cell phone usage.

The ultimate objective is to provide ?One Number Portability’, that is, continuous connection to the mobile worker in and out of the office and would like this to be easily deployed without increasing hardware assets and maintenance liabilities. In other words, mobile workers do not need to be tied to their desks anymore as we are mirroring the functionality of the desk phone on the mobile device.

How would you leverage the alliance with Google in the FMC space?

As a corporate policy, we cannot comment.

* IMS is an architectural framework for delivering IP multimedia services to end users. It is a part of the vision for evolving mobile networks beyond GSM. It. aids a form of Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC). This is done by having a horizontal control layer that isolates the access network from the service layer. (Source: Wikipedia)