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Technology Convergence Challenges

he convergence of voice, video and data over a single, high-speed packet-based network continues was originally driven largely by growing demand for data transmission and communication services, including wireless, fax, paging, cable and the Internet. This largely, business customer driver has today been surplanted by even stronger consumer demand of integrated media and telecom services.

Media services such as streaming video, have much greater bandwidth requirements than standard VoIP. In many cases Telcos have failed to meet demand, and in many countries, such as New Zealand, social and business services are not keeping up with world standards.

In the highly competitive world of telecommunications, time to market
is everything.

The challenge for telecommunication network services to expand at sufficient speed is complicated by:

Media developing at faster rates than phsycial techhology could ever hope to.
Lack of sufficient trained staff to meet the escalating demand for new rollouts and services upgrades.
Disparate standards between networks and network components and handsets.
Inappropriate regulatory frameworks to support full IP convergence framework

As the convergence of the teledatacom network continues, producing systems that are fast, efficient and easily deployed is of paramount
importance for suppliers.

Regulatory Challenges

IP convergence provides for integrated communication services using a common protocol, over almost any telecom technology, thereby removing traditional boundaries and limitations. Traditional forms of licensing specific technologies and/or services are rendered obsolete.

Legacy licensing becomes a brake on full implementation. Instead of focussing on individual players, regulators must focus on managing the market environment, to access and entry conditions at each level to eliminate artificial barriers and ensure entry barriers are minimised. For instance, existing regulations relating to rights of way, spectrum, numbers and domain names must be reassessed for more efficient use in a market environment with potentially many more participants and increased levels of competition. Efficient interconnection is crucial to the effective IP implementation.

Interconnect Pricing

Traffic or usage units of measurement for interconnection and access have in the past been based on network units - minutes (time duration), miles (distance) and circuits (capacity). IP convergence makes these units obsolete as circuits are neither connected nor provided. Likewise, neither distance nor time are determining cost factors. Instead, new measures relating to increments of bandwidth, quality and other claims on network capacity are the more relevant units of measurement.

VoIP may terminate international revenue settlement arrangements; international services and pricing structures will derive from new business models. VoIP brings all the major issues of IP and ICT convergence to a head.

A credible policy/regulatory structure is needed, recognizing the new horizontal structure of telecom markets in an IP convergence environment that fosters participation by a diversity of players.

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