We’ve been holding our breath for a long time now waiting for signs of progress with fixed-mobile convergence. Luckily, we have extra large lung capacity since progress has been slow. And we’re also lucky enough to have accrued lots of frequent flyer miles because most signs of FMC progress can be best viewed in Europe. We predicted that both 2006 and 2007 would be the years where FMC would emerge as a technological dream. So today, we’d like to turn to two full-time experts in FMC for a reality check, and point readers to a Webcast that provides more details on what’s real and what’s not in FMC.

Larry’s Current Analysis colleagues Mayur Sahni, senior analyst of Enterprise Mobility Europe, and Sandra O´Boyle, principal analyst of Business Telecom Services, recently delivered a Webcast that examined the drivers behind enterprise FMC. Their briefing takes a look at how various carriers are addressing the market and examines the enterprise FMC services offered in Europe today. A free online replay of their full presentation is available here.

In the briefing, Sahni and O’Boyle discuss:

* The enterprise FMC services that are commercially available in Europe today.
* The problems services solve and the opportunities they create.
* What the carriers are doing to get themselves organized for FMC.
* How the various types of service providers are approaching their FMC play, and why.
* What needs to happen to deliver “any-to-any” enterprise FMC services.

While we are still optimistic about FMC emerging with real solutions to business problems, it looks like we may still be waiting many more months before the service providers and their suppliers solve some of the problems that will make FMC a more widely attractive service. In the meantime, we’ll keep our guardedly optimistic view that FMC technology and solutions will continue to make progress this year both in the United States and in Europe, although we may need to wait a bit longer for U. S. carriers to catch up with the advances made across the Atlantic.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.