Ovum: Is time running out for FMC voice?

Angel Dobardziev at Ovum writes about a recent FMC conference in Amsterdam in March 2006 where he thought "interest in FMC, far from waning, is actually growing." After hearing presentations from both technology vendors and network operators, he thought "there was real pragmatism among the operators in terms of both fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) and fixed-to-mobile substitution (FMS). Operators are keen to deploy solutions that will meet the challenges and opportunities posed by their current market position, and maximise value today - be it in growing revenues or reducing costs."

Dobardziev cites some examples of efforts from Deutsche Telekom and BT and said "the most interesting insights came from Telecom Italia." He writes that:

Telecom Italia has a clear vision of its convergent service roadmap, which will have a UMA-based device first, and a SIP WiFi/cellular device later. It has also thought carefully about how and when it is going to achieve it. Under its'One Company ' model Telecom Italia will integrate its sales and customer-service operations, but it has also prepared a roadmap for the integration of its fixed and mobile networks. It plans to waste no time in doing this: by the end of 2008 it aims to have an integrated network with an IMS service core and IP transport layer connected to multiple access networks. Add to this its estimate that this will provide savings of 30-35% of its current opex, and one could be forgiven for thinking that this sounds slightly ambitious. However, having watched Telecom Italia innovate to deliver one of the best performances among European incumbents over the past few years, it is placed better than anyone to deliver on such ambitious plans.

Dobardziev then writes that the "lack of WiFi/cellular devices is still holding back operators. With a lack of standardised SIP solutions for FMC, which many fixed-led players would dearly love to deploy, they are forced to take UMA as 'with shortcomings, but ready now '. The marketing and the positioning of the services is yet to be worked out for many players, while the focus is only slowly moving from voice to multi-access data services." He concludes with:

In light of its painfully slow development, and taking into account the rampant FMS in many markets, is the window of opportunity closing for FMC, particularly for multi-access voice? Consider this: Vodafone Germany managed to sign up 250,000 Zuhause customers in three months, while it took KT over 18 months to reach 187,000 users of its OnePhone service. Could it be that by the time the right FMC devices hit the market in volumes at the right price with the right marketing, most consumers (albeit not enterprise users) will have decided that cellular is all they need?