Elsevier

Telematics and Informatics

Volume 18, Issues 2–3, May–December 2001, Pages 133-141
Telematics and Informatics

Fixed mobile internet convergence (FMIC)

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0736-5853(00)00025-3Get rights and content

Abstract

Convergence is one of the most frequently used catchwords in the information and communication field. While in general the increasing growing together of telecommunication, information and media technology is understood by this term and much has already been written about it, the term FMIC has existed for only a short time yet in telecommunication, and has not yet appeared much in the literature. FMIC stands for fixed mobile internet convergence and means the growing together of fixed networks, mobile networks and the Internet. In this article it will be demonstrated by means of three top existing current services what one should expect from the so-called FMIC-services.

Section snippets

Liberalisation and convergence

The liberalisation of telecommunication networks leads to more and more competitive pressure among the network providers. Those who serve fixed networks only are more and more pressurised by the quickly increasing number of providers of mobile networks. In addition, the Internet has made its way in the commercial area, too, and is now firmly entrenched in everyday professional life as well as in private usage. Exponential growth rates in the mobile networks and Internet area and large amounts

Public switched telephone network and Internet: voice over IP (VoIP)

The convergence of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) with the Internet is very interesting (Hamdi et al., 1999). Voice can also be transferred over the Internet (Internet Protocol, IP). Four cases can thus be differentiated: PC-to-PC, PC-to-phone, Phone-to-PC and Phone-to-phone; they will shortly be discussed using Fig. 2.

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    The PC-to-PC communication of Internet-telephoning can take place in the Intranet (LAN) i.e. from an H.3231

Fixed network and mobile network: Genion2 with home zone

A very interesting example is the so-called Genion offer of the Munich company Viag Interkom GmbH, which provides the customer with a cell-phone that can be used at home at fixed-network tariffs and on the road at mobile prices. Within the so-called Home zone, the radius of which is at least 200 m around the customer's address, one telephones for fixed-network tariffs. Then a house symbol appears on the cell-phone display and the logo “Interkom home”. Along with the Genion cell-phone the

Mobile network and Internet: WAP3

An example of how Internet and mobile communication grow together is the wireless application protocol (WAP). WAP transfers via a micro-browser in a cell-phone specially-processed Internet information. For this the specially developed language wireless mark-up language (WML) is used. WML is a tag-based language like the hypertext mark-up language (HTML) that is used in the web (Van der Heijden and Taylor, 2000). WML has been optimised for the display of information on small instruments (i.e.

Conclusion

The convergence of fixed network, mobile network and Internet services will certainly proceed. The providers as well as the customers can profit from such a service convergence and even a network convergence. It is true that convergent services are technically very demanding, but the customer should expect simpler procedures, e.g., only a single invoice for the fixed-network access, the cell-phone subscription and Internet access and should expect above all more attractive new services. The

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