Fixed-mobile convergence:
engineering a life without barriers

The industry’s current “mega trends” can be summed up as a progression from a single choice to multiple ones, with many social communities, a variety of devices with a broad service mix and many business models existing in harmony side by side. But it all starts with the consumer, who often desires a life without barriers. These days FMC considerations play a huge role in the development of both wireline and mobile specifications; standards and specifications were previously approached in a more vertical fashion, but today a comprehensive, end-to-end horizontal approach is needed, one that takes into account the entire telecom ecosystem.

What exactly is needed to achieve FMC? An architecture that enables seamless connectivity across both wireline and wireless access boundaries. This architecture must:

• deliver broadband connectivity and standardized multimedia services to a wide range of devices, including media servers, video cameras, portable media players, PCs, and mobile phones;
• satisfy the consumer electronics industry’s need to achieve economies of scale while providing smooth integration with enterprise environments;
• support services that are both affordable to consumers and profitable for operators;
• reduce the cost of network deployment and operation.

Change is happening quickly in the web economy. It is crucial to maintain network flexibility in order to quickly respond to market demands, which is why the Broadband Forum continues to work hard to respond to those demands.

Creating a common ecosystem

The Broadband Forum is creating an architecture that fosters a common ecosystem, one based on open standards and interoperability throughout a network. This architecture aims to empower an online life without barriers and will allow converged services to be seamlessly and intuitively accessible across all devices and all networks. For operators the introduction of new services and additional network capacity must incur minimal additional costs. With that in mind, the Broadband Forum has engaged in broadband convergence activities from the perspective of supporting the capability of delivering any service, anytime and anywhere, via any-access technology.

A multiservice architecture will open the door for new, access-independent services. Fixed-network operators, mobile-network operators and even converged operators will benefit from these services and generate new revenue streams. By adhering to the new architecture specifications, operators can embrace FMC to create differentiated services and utilize it as a powerful tool to challenge the competition, increase market share and raise average revenue per user (ARPU). This is indeed the main objective of the Broadband Forum’s ongoing efforts to develop a unified architecture and migration toolkit for the telecommunications industry.