Infonetics Research has announced results of a fixed-mobile convergence study involving 24 service providers from around the world, and has concluded that 80 percent of them will launch FMC services by April 2008.
The prospects for FMC continue to be exciting, and at some point, wireline carriers in particular will need to make bigger and more strategic commitments to FMC than the smattering of trials, lab work and limited commercial launches we've seen so far. Infonetics' findings may suggest we're getting over the market hump, but keep in mind there's still a lack of specificity about what real defines an FMC service. We'll need to see how close upcoming launches live up to the goal of truly seamless services.
Also, FMC seems to be right around the corner, but it's seemed that way for a while.
For further analysis of Infonetics' analysis:
- see this piece in InformationWeek