With over 680 pages of research, 2006 Global Telecommunications – Industry and Market report series contains a comprehensive analysis of the international telecoms industry and the companies involved these markets.This research is divided into the following volumes: Volume 1 - Global Internet - The Emerging Internet EconomyVolume 2- Global Broadband – Speeding up DSLVolume 3 -Global Mobile – Voice still the Killer AppVolume 4 -Global Mobile Data – Battle between HSDPA and WiMAXThe year 2007 will see a further increase in the convergence of telecoms, media and IT, which started to become more visible in 2006.
With the telecoms industry rapidly changing from being telephone-focused to application-focused, the convergence that Paul Budde has been talking about for more than a decade is slowly becoming a reality.
The first results have been witnessed with the arrival of Digital Media, led by the Internet.
People are quickly adopting Digital Media because it offers new multimedia formats that enhance the Internet users’ experience.
Everybody is talking about Google, Yahoo, YouTube, eBay, Amazon and so on.
Google Earth, MySpace, Flickr and many more services in which millions of people have become involved with were unheard of as little as five years ago.
This renewed interest in the Internet is stimulating other industry sectors to change their business models in order to align themselves with the developing Internet economy.
Digital Media also brings with it a second trend that lies in the advancement of digitalised television/entertainment.
This at first will lead to an increase in the number of channels and new interactive formats and from 2007 onwards traditional broadcasting will increasingly become a subset of broadband.Digital Media however can only be fully developed once there are wide spread high-speed broadband networks available.
This demand for broadband will lead to the further development of fibre networks, as the current copper-based networks simply cannot handle the increased capacities required.Over the next 12 to 18 months, we will see a continuation of large scale fibre announcements from the various incumbent telcos around the globe.
Key leaders include the telcos in Japan, Korea, USA, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, France and the Scandinavian countries.Fixed-line voice will probably be with us forever, but it will also become a subset of broadband, instead of the other way around.
Despite retaining its role as cash cows for incumbent operators; fixed and mobile voice services are progressively being overtaken by broadband.
In the western world, wireless broadband offers new opportunities as a competitor for DSL in some niche markets.2007 will see a further increase in the emergence of triple play business models and while VoIP will be a key element in triple play packages - it is broadband video (IPTV) that will make the products viable.
VoIP is already becoming more prominent in corporate and government markets, because of the Next Generation/broadband corporate networks.
In the residential market it is still largely a ‘hobby’ product linked to the Internet, and the quality remains questionable.
Large scale implementation will occur however, once wide spread broadband networks are in place, and it is incorporated into the triple play business models.
Wireless VoIP could also challenge 3G towards the end of the decade.
The development of VoIP will further reduce the telcos’ revenues and add additional pressure on them to adopt more of a wholesaling rather than a retailing business model.
The operational separation of BT is reverberating throughout the global industry, with several European telcos already ‘voluntarily’ moving in the direction of transparent and equivalent wholesale services.
The convergence of telecoms and broadcasting infrastructures will produce some major battles in the telco/media space in the years to come.