UK facing $1.3bn FMC black hole

The trend towards fixed-mobile convergence or FMC could see mobile operators kiss goodbye to billions of dollars.

Research from VoIP watchers iLocus forecasts UK mobile operators will lose $1.3bn per year in revenues by 2011 as a result of FMC and will need a 63 per cent share of the FMC market to balance the negative impact of the converged technology.

US operators could see a $3.3bn drop although they will need a slightly smaller FMC market share to balance its impact - 61 per cent.

The situation is not entirely apocalyptic for the operators, however. While they may lose out on revenue as cellular minutes, networks will be able to claw back revenue by charging FMC subscriptions, as well as potentially gaining new subscribers.

According to iLocus' research, there were 436,000 FMC subscribers worldwide last year. BT's Fusion service was the UK's first FMC offering when it launched in 2005 and is now thought to have more than 50,000 paying customers.