Businesses converge on FMC tech

Fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) will have racked up 170 million subscribers by 2012 but consumers will lag behind businesses to sign up to the tech.

Almost nine per cent of businesses will use FMC devices versus just less than five per cent for the total number of consumer voice subscribers, according to research from analyst house Informa Telecoms & Media.

FMC is predicted to account for more than five per cent of the market by 2012, Informa's Fixed Mobile Convergence Strategic Report predicts.

Cheat Sheets

♦ Mobile location-based services
♦ FMC
♦ 3G

FMC allows users to make calls over both VoIP and mobile networks from a single handset. Revenues for this tech will reach $33.4bn by 2012, Informa calculates.

Paul Merry, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, said FMC makes sense for businesses because it enables a number of attractive services, such as unified messaging, and a single managed communication account. But consumer FMC currently only offers the convenience of a single bill and discounted pricing.

As a consequence, said Merry, consumer FMC "faces a substantial challenge in capturing the consumer imagination".

Dual mode handsets will make up 14 per cent of all handsets sold to enterprises by 2012 and four per cent of commercial users in Europe will be on FMC services by that time, telecoms watcher Analysys predicts.