At sea over convergence?

Quocirca's Straight Talking: Swim with the whales, minnows and sharks...

There are many ways of tackling fixed-mobile convergence. Quocirca's Rob Bamforth simplifies the problem with a marine analogy.

The mobile industry is regularly referred to as an ecosystem. So one way of discriminating between approaches is to use a maritime metaphor to divide up the industry into whales, sharks and minnows.

Whales are incumbent operators, and for this discussion it doesn't matter whether they are fixed or mobile. The important issue is they have network assets that they want used profitably and a customer base they don't want to lose or churn to another operator.

For these companies, fixed-mobile convergence is more about fixed-mobile substitution - preventing themselves being substituted out by existing customers and trying to substitute in new ones.

These efforts are understandable, especially as most are publicly quoted companies, but in the rush to keep costs down and maximise profits, the efforts are often lamentable.

They often rely on specialised technology being deployed - such as dual-mode handsets - and the proliferation of new networks to increase coverage, either building in pico/femto cells or wi-fi access points. While these are not massive technology challenges, they make deployment uneven.

The whales also bundle and create tariffs that appear to keep costs down, while at the same time they try to build new revenue streams from what they see as innovative advanced converged services. But subscribers often view these as expensive, overly complex or simply not that appealing.

The danger is that even when subscribers fail to recognise the value, they do notice the cost, especially from mobile devices and most especially while roaming overseas.

Not only is this a big issue for individuals, it is a huge concern for companies, especially when the line between business and private use blurs.

Recent Quocirca research shows that roaming call costs are the most important issue for European businesses when negotiating a mobile operator contract.

Sharks don't own their own networks. They feed off others, and include companies offering IP telephony, dial-back calling plans and virtual network operators.

They run services as efficiently as possible, using open networks in preference to more proprietary mechanisms and wi-fi minutes instead of 3G megabytes.

While the whales are struggling to deliver a unified and ubiquitous proposition, there will always be an opportunity for sharks to create a compelling offer - most often based on price.

Small businesses, budget-constrained departments in large enterprises and many individuals will have certain specific expensive communication situations - relatives on the other side of the planet, multi-regional team conference calls, the need to frequently work from home, use of mobile email while travelling - and will favour sharks.

Point solutions that address specific cost pain-points will always be a win with the finance department but can make life more complicated for the individual user if they have to pick and choose the right or cheapest solution for each situation.

Larger enterprises in particular will find these complicated to deploy and manage, and our research shows that they still favour whales over sharks. Most businesses believe traditional telecoms providers and mobile operators are better placed than new emerging companies to offer the breadth of communications services required in the future.

The many minnows in this sea of convergence are the businesses and users who just want the best deal. That means keeping it as simple and cheap as possible. But while cost is important, minutes are increasingly scarce in a time-pressured world, so simplicity of communication is ever more valuable.

This can be summed up as the Lord of the Rings proposition - one number, one address book, one voicemail, one bill - converging on the user, not the technology.

Oh, and if you must, one device too but why would you really want to do that? After all, sometimes a desktop is convenient, sometimes a laptop, often a mobile phone, sometimes a fixed one. But it always depends on the needs of the person at the end of it.

In all the fussing over nifty new features, roaming to the cheapest networks and acronym overloading from VoIP to LTE (long term evolution) and WiMax, it's important not to forget the killer app of telephony - the ability for one individual to communicate effectively with another, or several others if your social network allows.

For more information on the convergence challenges facing operators and enterprises, download Quocirca's recent report Convergence or confusion?