Meeting Customer Expectations with Converged Services

摘要

Today, the telecommunications world is clearly separated into two worlds: the world of fixed line and the world of mobile communication. Each has different business models, different networks optimally tailored for their specific purposes, different organisations, and partly different services. The separation was reasonable in times of steady and strong market growth for each respective domain. The falling average revenue per user (ARPU) for voice services and high churn rates are exerting tremendous pressures on both fixed and mobile operators as they increasingly compete for the same subscriber and service revenues. Fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) is seen as one of the key areas for incumbent operators to differentiate themselves in the face of increased competition from emerging voice-over-IP (VoIP) offerings and furthermore to cope with churn. Four different interpretations for convergence between fixed and mobile operators can be identified in the market: 1. marketing and sales convergence - for example, generating the same bill for fixed and mobile subscription; 2. network convergence - for example, common network infrastructure and operations; 3. service and application convergence - for example, offering presence-based instant messaging (IM) over fixed and mobile networks; and 4. device convergence - for example, dual-mode phones. This paper gives an introduction to different interpretations of convergence, focuses on service and applications convergence and converged services, provides examples for converged services, takes a look at end-users' desires, and highlights technologies, such as the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) and the ETSI/TISPAN architecture.