* Lucent's recent study into fixed-mobile convergence
Lucent recently completed a study looking at the enterprise and consumer markets’ demand and willingness to pay for “blended services.” Lucent defines blended services as an integrated set of voice, video and data features that are “always on” giving users the ability to move from one function to another during a communication session. In addition, blended services give users the ability to have simultaneous use of voice, video and data features in one session.
For example, blended services allow users to:
* Change an instant message session to a voice call or video conference call.
* Convert a voice call to a video conferencing session.
* Switch between an IM session with the “boss” and a voice call with a “customer.”
* Share real-time streaming video and pre-recorded video clips while on a voice call.
* Browse the Web while on voice/conference call – with the potential to add Web sharing.
* Send/receive voice mail, video mail or e-mail while on a voice call.
Interest for blended services was moderately strong among consumers and enterprises, according to the study. Early adoption of these services was somewhat higher among enterprise users. In western Europe more than seven out of ten possible enterprise users would likely use the service: 14% would be early adopters, 45% would adopt the services once the service capability was proven in the marketplace, and 29% would take a “wait and see” approach; the remaining 12% either didn’t know or had no plans to use the services.
Translating the percentages to real numbers, the survey projects more than 12 million blended service consumer and enterprise users with a five-year cumulative revenue opportunity of Euro 14.0 billion (Euro 7.4 billion enterprise and Euro 6.6 billion consumer) in western Europe by 2011. In the United States, the research projects a $9.8 billion five-year cumulative revenue opportunity for combined consumer and enterprise markets.
Our analysis: The term “fixed-mobile convergence” has been often misused thereby skewing some realistic market expectation about revenue and spending. However, this study shows some real life services examples and presents some credible market opportunities. Of course the underlying infrastructure for these services depends on the successful deployment of IP-Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) architectures AND the cooperation of both wireline and wireless services providers. Carriers are still in the early stages of IMS deployments and their wireline-wireless cooperation is often more a strategy than a developed business process. But in the reputed words of a U.S. politician, “a billion here, a billion there – pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
