InfoCom reveals European residentials more interested in bundles rather than FMC.

STUTTGART, GERMANY, October 10, 2010 (Press-News.org) Fixed mobile convergence (FMC) is on many operators' strategy agenda. Common statements refer to "connected home", "integrated services", "content/Internet everywhere" and many more. However, there are in reality very few fixed mobile convergent offers commercially available so far. A brand new report from InfoCom finds that most commercial services are based on product bundling, whereas few truly convergent concepts made it to the market.

In Europe, residential FMC is currently widely driven by product bundling. Several providers changed their strategy aimed at offering integrated content services over three screens (PCs, mobile phones and TV sets), to selling multi play bundles and smartphones, with quad play offer simply bundling fixed telephony, broadband, TV and mobile services without offering related integrated convergent services.

Several integrated FMC offers are hardware-driven, centred on a mobile end-device or home gateway in order to offer voice or data services as complement to fixed services. For instance mobile and Wi-Fi bundles with dual phones or hotspot services; femtocell-based services; or home services with the new tablet computers. While most dual mode phone services were discontinued — success of smartphones was fatal to these services — the report finds that femtocell operators' strategies remain still cautious. Almost all operators so far positioned the service as an indoor coverage solution aimed at consumers and small businesses. Only NTT DoCoMo in Japan provides dedicated services with its femtocell, for instance, exclusive audio and video content services and "home presence" notification services. In general, Japanese operators are forerunner for femtocell business models. In Europe, Vodafone is deploying diverse femtocell services for users across its footprint.

As the report highlights, in the residential FMC market, one of the main current driver is the launch of innovative hardware with more commercial femtocell offers appearing as well as bundles with hotspot services. All in all, though, consumers seem to be more interested in simple product bundles, which bring some price advantages rather than in integrated services. In fact, in addition to the right pricing, services must be easy to understand, to install and, above all, to use.

About this report: FMC is one of the topics included in InfoCom latest paper Residential fixed mobile substitution (FMS) and convergence (FMC) - Showing caution after the hype, one of the reports of the new Series Mobile Broadband 2010 — Creating Mobile Value, a new series of reports focused on specific topics all around mobile broadband. This report presents the most interesting development around the topic Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC), with all interesting services, pricing, commercial strategies as well as the most common business models, providing also striking findings in a concise yet very effective way.

About InfoCom: InfoCom is a market research and consultancy company with over 20 years experience providing strategic analyses and planning assistance to stakeholders in the telecommunications, IT and multimedia industries. InfoCom's independent and fact-based analyses highlight trends and opportunities, supporting decision makers to understand market dynamics in order to improve their competitive advantage.