
Cornered! is a blog devoted, most of the time anyway, to telecommunications: local and global issues, technology, people and trends from the perspective of someone who's been reporting, analysing and commenting on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition). Sometimes serious, sometimes flippant, sometimes frivolous. Controversial, analytical, informative, amusing, but never boring; a vehicle for examinations of important issues and observations on my encounters and experiences in an industry where polarised views and hyperbole are the norm.
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Cornered!
Get ready for another disruption
Cornered!
Get ready for another disruption | Get ready for another disruption |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Saturday, 30 September 2006 | |
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Page 1 of 3 Falling prices, soaring penetration levels and 'bucket plans' have all brought that prospect much closer to reality but the growth of VoIP over fixed networks is now threatening to slow this momentum thanks to fixed mobile convergence: the bringing together fixed and mobile communications technologies services and tariffs into a seamless service that uses the lowest cost or most appropriate channel. Australia in fact was a pioneer. Convergence was the key selling point of Hutchison's CDMA service, launched in the mid 1990s. The mobile service came with a fixed number. When you were at or close to home people could call you on that number and pay normal fixed line rates, and when you made a call on your mobile from home you were charged at fixed line rates. (You could also get calls to your fixed line number when you were away from home but you paid diversion charges.) The service proved very popular. Too popular. Hutchison ceased promoting it and switched to selling CDMA as a normal cellular service. However in mid 2005 the company revived the concept, only to announce a few months later the shutdown of the CDMA network. |
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