New Trends in Telecommunications 2 – Convergence

The most important implication of the technological innovations in the area of electronic communications (especially of the described proliferation VoIP technologies) is that the existing markets will converge in one market. Currently there are markets for mobile telephony, fixed telephony, internet, etc. This all is likely to disappear. There are four key areas which will experience convergence: firstly, fixed and mobile markets will merge; secondly, voice and data markets will become one market; thirdly, communications and media will not be different markets and, fourthly, communications and IT will become interconnected. There are already now many examples of where this is clearly happening. In my opinion there is one example which is likely to become a future trend: a new product will become available on the Belgium market soon which is aiming at providing one device for services available on several markets. Obviously this is convergence at a very early stage and many doubts have been expressed as to whether the currently available technologies will ensure adequate quality of those services. The product can be best described as an elaborated version of a mobile telephone. When the user is at home or work (or in fact close to any publicly available internet hotspot) where a wireless internet connection is available phone calls made from the phone are carried over IP. Since this phone uses wireless technologies there is no need for a fixed connection. At the moment when the user exits area where wireless internet connection is available it automatically connects to the mobile network and all the services available from that network (including 3G) are available on that telephone as well. So the telephone has features of both fixed and mobile telephones as well as it is possible to access media and entertainment through either internet or 3G services. Time will show if there is adequate demand for such a product. But it surely represents a much elaborated attempt of convergence in practice. In fact with the introduction of WiMAX technologies (technologies which allow wireless internet access for up to 4 kilometres from the source) could accelerate such a convergence. However, doubts have been expressed as to whether WiMAX is capable of replacing the existing fixed XDSL technologies. It is perceived that in order to ensure a comparably quick internet access through WiMAX (comparing to XDSL) a large part of the radio spectrum will have to be taken up. Since radio spectrum is a limited national resource this would be neither possible nor efficient. As a result fixed XDSL access is still likely to play a key role in providing services in the area of electronic communications. It is also unlikely that WiMAX will replace mobile telephone technologies completely (especially the 3G services). This is, firstly, because of already described problem of limited radio spectrum. Secondly, setting up WiMAX outside big cities will most likely be too expensive and economically not viable.