Fixed Mobile Convergence

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Fixed Mobile Convergence

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June 29, 2009

Mobility will be the Fixed Broadband Killer App

By Gary Kim, Contributing Editor


The killer app for fixed broadband now is Internet access. In the future, mobility will be the killer app that ensures fixed broadband remains a key foundation for consumer communication and entertainment services.
 
That might strike you as odd. As wireless broadband - based both on wireless data cards and dongles as well as mobile handsets - grows, so do concerns about the long-term health of the fixed broadband business. After all, some would argue, why bother with a tethered broadband connection when a wireless substitute of high functionality will be available.

 
Cost is the reason consumers will have all the incentives they need to maintain their fixed broadband connections: the cost of mobile broadband plans on most devices that consume video. Simply, to save money, consumers will want to offload some of that consumption to their fixed broadband connections, which always will cost less, per megabyte, than wireless connections.
 
AT&T (News - Alert), for example, has talked conceptually about such unified access plans for some time, and now is taking direct steps to prepare for such a future by readying a national rollout of femtocell technology.  
 
Femtocells (News - Alert) allow existing handsets to switch to an in-home base station instead of relying on the macrocell network. That shifts consumption to the fixed line. Both carriers and consumers will have financial incentives to make sure that happens on a wide scale. 
 
And scale likely will be necessary. Some note that carriers such as Orange, that have been using femtocells for a couple years, have found operational cost issues.
 
Some 10 percent of Orange customers move annually and as a result Femtocells must be easily moved around and be reinstalled. The cost of an install appears to run about $422 to $700 per truck roll.
 
That makes for a tough business case, when consumers are not paying for the installs. Still, there is reason to believe the install costs will drop over time, as they have for virtually every other wireline service.
 
 

Gary Kim (News - Alert) is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Gary’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi


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Fixed Mobile Convergence

encompasses a wide range of mobile services that converge elements of fixed communications infrastructure to complement the core mobile service. In most cases fixed mobile convergence (FMC) services allow the user or the network to take advantage of higher speed, cheaper local unlicensed access networks in local environments for lower value, high volume transactions.
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FMC Resources
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Social networking and the next generation of handheld devices will improve business decision-making through efficient, unified communications and location awareness.
The Promise of Mobile Unified Communications
An exclusive Computerworld online survey offers insight into how companies can develop cost-effective strategies for implementing or improving mobile applications and foster an efficient workplace.
Who Needs a Desk Phone?
By Cliff Edwards
BusinessWeek
FMC White Papers
FMC Press Releases
FMC Convergence Showcase
BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System (BlackBerry MVS) BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System (BlackBerry MVS) converges office desk phones and BlackBerry® smartphones, allowing users to access standard enterprise voice features whether at their desks or on the go*. BlackBerry MVS encompasses BlackBerry® MVS Client software for BlackBerry smartphones, BlackBerry MVS Services of BlackBerry® Enterprise Server, and the Ascendent Voice Mobility Suite.

With BlackBerry MVS, BlackBerry smartphone users can access enterprise desk phone options directly from the menu interface of the BlackBerry phone application, while at the same time securely authenticating to the organization’s enterprise telephony system (PBX). BlackBerry MVS also gives IT administrators the control to set voice policies on the BlackBerry smartphone, so that inbound and outbound calls use the enterprise line. This allows for all mobile calls to be logged or recorded for compliance with regulatory or corporate standards.
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