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Single Gadget Weaves Phone, Internet and Media Services WIRELESS

Posted on: Monday, 25 July 2005, 12:00 CDT

So far, the information age has produced few real-world examples of "convergence," the concept of braiding together separate phone, Internet, and media networks to produce sophisticated new applications.

Think of a home's Internet connection complementing a televised movie with Web-based information posted on the screen or the display of a wireless remote. Meanwhile, the system might use SMS, e-mail or other available messaging channels to alert friends to the broadcast who could then converse during the movie through Internet voice links or live text chats.

While far from an everyday reality, digital pathways are just starting to twist into more useful hybrid services. On the heels of a joint strategy announcement with Microsoft, France Telecom this month offered up its latest version of convergence by tacking on a few useful services to its Livebox home networking product, a "triple play" service combining Internet, telephone and television service. The most interesting of the new "Liveservices" from the company is a Wi-Fi-based cordless home phone. Called Livephone, the device uses its wireless link to Livebox's Internet connection to provide inexpensive Internet voice calls and other services including a connection to the user's Web-based address book to find and dial numbers. The 99.99, or $120, device will also tell users if they have new e-mail and display weather, traffic, news and sports results from online servers.

None of this requires turning on a PC, as the Livephone makes all the necessary connections.

"You can have on a single phone not only voice, but also access to other devices," said Paul-Francois Fournier, director of France Telecom's European broadband unit.

The Freebox services do not use Microsoft software yet, but future offerings will be developed with Microsoft network technology, Fournier said. Not all of the new France Telecom services merge two distinct network delivery lanes to create a "smarter" device or application. But what they all seem to do is take advantage of maturing technologies like Wi-Fi and third- generation mobile telephony.

For example, a 199 product called Livezoom can take images from a wireless camera linked to the home network and hand them off to the Livebox's phone service for instant viewing on video-compatible mobile phones or any Internet-connected PC.

"We want to be the best provider to connect all those devices," said Fournier. "And to get them connected in what we call the home network."

Cesar Bachelet, an analyst with Ovum, said that other European telecommunications companies like BT have offered services like the ability to make phone calls through instant-messaging software on the PC (known to British consumers as BT Communicator). BT is also rolling out a Motorola phone that can link to fixed-line or mobile networks. France Telecom says it intends to introduce a hybrid fixed- mobile phone of its own in the French market, called Homezone.

Of the new France Telecom offerings, Bachelet said: "They're all fairly linked services. That's what's new."

Jacques-Etienne Grandjean, Microsoft's director for communications-sector sales in Europe, said the company would be working regularly in partnerships with European carriers to find new convergence possibilities using Microsoft technology.

Bachelet of Ovum said he expected such services to appeal only to niche, not mass markets. Nonetheless, he said they would bring in important new revenue, in equipment sales and subscription fees, for telecom companies.

Those companies' traditional fixed-line voice revenues are in decline while plain broadband is becoming a commodity service, Bachelet noted.

Olivier Rosenfeld, chief financial officer at Illiad, which owns Free, a France Telecom competitor, said the company saw obvious appeal in offerings like Liveservices. "I have nothing to tell you about specifically, but we are very interested in these kinds of services."

In a minor nod to convergence, Free recently offered subscribers to its similar "triple-play" Freebox broadband service a free upgrade called Freeplayer.

The feature enables users to shuttle media video or music files from their computers to their televisions or digital-capable stereo systems.

Source: International Herald Tribune

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