Solutions Overview
Solutions Overview
Telecommunications convergence is here now
The world of telecommunications has changed beyond all recognition over the last decade. The mobile device has revolutionized our lives and redefined the way we communicate. How we pay for these communications services has changed too – pre-paid payment mechanisms are commonplace and the payment method of choice.
The fixed internet has truly arrived. It is used daily, frequently and pervasively for email communication, as a research tool, and as a communications medium. Music and video retailing is also changing as digital content and distribution means that the 'long tail' of markets is now commercially viable. Mobile data rates have increased to the point that the major technological challenges are associated with the constraints of screen “real estate” and usability.
But look behind the scenes. Telecommunications companies – wire-line and wireless – are providing a standardised, homogenised, utilitarian service. They are providing access and connectivity which is under disruptive competitive pressure from new entrant voice over IP (VoIP) providers that ride on the back of ubiquitous broadband and internet access. Consequently, telephony prices are falling, margins are shrinking.
Telecoms companies are becoming bit-pipe providers in a commodity market. And yet, the internet has already shown us that consumers have an appetite for multiple communication modes as well as wanting to access a bewildering array of content. There has been much activity and money spent on enabling effective content delivery over mobile telecoms networks in recent years. But much internet content is voluminous, self-authored, free or financed by advertising (which requires screen space).
Telecommunications – it’s about person-to-person communication
In Western Europe in 2007, 95% of mobile telephony revenues and margin (€29.5 of a total ARPU of €30.4) are associated with person to person voice and messaging. Analyst predictions foresee voice and messaging constituting at least 80% of telecoms business, by 2012. Yet Mobile Operators all sell the same, limited voice and messaging product set with limited ability to differentiate.
Why?
Because more than in any other form of telecommunications, mobile services are provided by Intelligent Network (IN) platforms – and today’s IN platforms are complex, inflexible, time-consuming and costly to adapt. They were conceived and developed in a different telecommunications era.