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Tuesday, 22 January 2008 |
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It’s a telling experience when one of the world’s largest telecommunications equipment makers invites you to a briefing about the future of the industry and you realize you are the only telecommunications journalist there and that every other journalist in the room is covering cable and/or satellite broadcasting.
The fact is that we no longer live in a world of future convergence – we are living in a convergent world.
In my home my phone service is provided by my Internet service provider, I have a second Internet connection provided by a cable television operator and a third provided by my mobile network operator.
I make and take telephone calls from my PC and I browse the Internet on my phone. I also spend more time watching television on my mobile phone and on my various computers than on my television although I have to admit, I don’t watch much television.
That convergence is progressing at such a pace will please many. The problem is that this is not the converged world that was predicted. Convergence was supposed to make our lives simpler – mean that we could make or take our calls on whatever device suited us better at the time, watch the television programme of our choice when and where and on which device we wanted and have one bill take care of all of it.
The reality is very different. Even when we get converged services from one supplier we often find ourselves with more than one set of bills. And rather than one device that does everything we are finding ourselves with growing piles of devices that do something (but never all) of everything. And to make matters worse, devices and services can be hellishly difficult to master.
Friction – or making things too complicated – is the main reason that consumers are put off from using new products and services. And the convergent world we live in is full of friction. All too often if you don’t know how to configure a port on your router, you are not invited to the party. And guess what, 98% of the world’s population don’t know what a router port is, let alone how to configure one.
Convergence – and making it a positive experience for the ordinary consumer – will in the long term sort out the winners from the losers amongst both telecommunications service providers and their rivals from the worlds of broadcasting and the Internet.
Suppliers will be keen to identify who the likely winners will be. Perhaps this explains the invite list at the briefing. Now that’s a scary thought. |
