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Americas Issue: November 2006
Feature
Fixed Mobile Convergence: Mixing the Right Blend
Carriers must develop or acquire content or be content as simply broadband pipes.
by Jim Barthold
Like a sub-sea temblor, IP is creating a tsunami of change that can sweep away network providers not savvy and agile enough to ride the wave by providing applications to go with service.
At the Fall VON conference in Boston, a panel was devoted to the question of whether voice is a service or an application. No one answered the question but the implication was clear: voice, like everything else that runs on a broadband pipe, is an application that must be delivered by a service provider.
Carriers that don’t understand that distinction “are going to become pipes. It’s inevitable in the long run,” said Jeff Lipton, president of Pulse Media, a company that builds applications to run over wireless networks.
Lipton softened his harsh analysis by saying carriers can delay or offset this change, but his point was that broadband’s ability to carry non-voice services opens the floodgates for over-the-top applications providers.
Carriers Disagree
Since all major wireline carriers declined to be interviewed for this article, it’s difficult to discern what they think about this issue, but it’s clear from the wireless players and cable operator who responded that Lipton’s bleak future is not one they see for themselves.
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