Pipeline Publishing, Volume 4, Issue 1
This Month's Issue:
Come Together:
Fixed-Mobile Convergence
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Who's Your Daddy?
The Characteristics and Drivers of FMC

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(Authors’ note: The IDC observation is not completely accurate, especially across North America, where it is certainly the case today that consumers can indeed plug in their phones immediately – if they move into a home that is pre-wired and jacked.)

It is quite possible that FMC and its use as a platform for Advanced Services may be too complex to manage via centralized systems. One clear necessity is the mobile phone resident management agent specified as an option in 3GPP release 7. The rapid and dynamic way in which devices will switch networks and services means that new methods will be needed to know what is the state of a device and what services are active. It certainly puts another nail in the coffin for network-based stovepipe management architectures.

Even NGOSS ESB technology may be insufficient for knitting together this, although the TMF’s Service Delivery Platform may become a key enabler. Bottom line – OSS/BSS applications and the different operational processes associated with mobile, land voice, and internet data may be the single biggest obstacle to realizing and successfully marketing FMC!

This all makes FMC a strong example of our notion that a new management paradigm is needed. Key to this new approach will be grid-based network, application infrastructures and distributed smart management agents. These agents will move through the network following and watching their assigned users and devices. They will form a virtualized model of the state and connectivity of the FMC devices. But more than just watch and mange, these agents are likely to evolve to become service gateways to SaaS and Web Services needed by the devices.

The bottom line

Our ability to see the future is limited, but our past experience suggests that the idealistic view of FMC as saving the operator is not a likely outcome. At fault, in principle, is the failure of Service Providers to build a New Product Introduction (NPI) strategy which meets this vision of the future, will excite consumers, and be delivered at costs low enough to generate profit. This includes understanding and making the changes to the OSS/BSS applications and processes to support dynamically convergent devices and services (keeping in mind that all FMC terminals are always in a state of dynamic discovery). “Who’s your Daddy?” becomes the first question any management application must ask of a device – or a service.

Instead of service providers leveraging network resident, centralized IMS and multi-modal network devices for access (that are still locked to a specific provider) to keep

ownership and control of services and customers, we see a distributed infrastructure and a service marketplace. We see it playing out as so: The device market will be owned by consumer electronic giants selling directly to the consumer through mega electronic chains. The service market will be dominated by 3rd party providers utilizing web services and SaaS. Service Providers will become a quality QoS-enabled transport utility owning the home & business access network, but not the home terminal, nor the municipal/commercial terminals. That battle is between Microsoft, Sony and Google and a topic for another day.

To succeed, a technology must have, or lead to, something the consuming public wants. Today’s consumer is met with a very big product/desire gap: too many required devices, not enough services. FMC in its broadest definitions actually excites us and we expect it will excite the general consumer as well.

The only clear outcome of Fixed-Mobile Convergence is the death of traditional OSS/BSS applications.

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