I never comment on other blogs, because it seems too recursive for my defensive programming blood. That said, I was reading a fairly good criticism of FMC in the Telco 2.0 blog, but I think there’s some FMC points that was missed, and in fairness, should be mentioned.

1) As I understand it, the largest customer complaint about current mobile service was that signal quality was low inside many houses. This is a big deal, since a very large percentage of cell phone use (something like 10-20%) occurs in the house. FMC directly solves this problem, and in my opinion, is worth the effort.
2) FMC means more than modal transparency - it means service transparency as well. I really would like to have my mobile phone appear exactly as my business desk phone. I would like both to ring at the same time, have the same voice mail, have the same features, work extension, DID, auto-attendant… everything. For me, this would be valuable.

That said, the Telco 2.0 blog is very cool - but I think just a bit out of bounds on this one.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 10:04 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

Hi all -

Well, summer is over, and it’s time to get back on the stick. I wanted to share something with you. If you’re like me, you always hear that the future of telephony is in applications. Well, here’s some data from a VDC report on the future of IMS. In the report, they ask a number of carriers what applications they plan to deploy on their IMS networks. The results :

1) Fixed mobile convergence : 80% of carriers
2) Music streaming : 79% of carriers
3) IP Centrex : 69% of carriers
4) Gaming : 68% of carriers
5) Video streaming : 63% of carriers

I find these numbers completely fascinating. For instance, three of the top five applications are based on entertainment. Also, we hear so much in my industry about FMC, but nearly as many carriers are looking for music streaming. The gaming one is fairly surprising to me, as I also have access to current gaming numbers from the mobile industry, and they aren’t really that compelling.

As always I’m on the hunt for new applications - let me know what you are seeing.

Thomas

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 9:50 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment