US : 3G Americas has published a white paper entitled "Fixed-Mobile Convergence: Understanding the Marriage of Wireless and Wireline Technologies" that outlines a complex and multi-faceted technological trend promising great changes to the way customers utilize communications services. The paper highlights how Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) should seamlessly deliver personalized communications services to devices using whatever network is most appropriate.

Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas, stated, "The promise of Fixed-Mobile Convergence is huge and the impact on the industry, and most importantly the end-user, will be nothing short of revolutionary." He added, "The recipe for converged service is available today, with key ingredients in place such as ubiquitous broadband access and advanced cellular networks, coupled with enhanced core network architecture."

3G Americas' white paper, "Fixed-Mobile Convergence: Understanding the Marriage of Wireless and Wireline Technologies," details the motivation and key market drivers for FMC, the current industry landscape, operator segmentation, standardization work, service requirements, and challenges and obstacles of migrating towards a service goal that, by its very nature, necessitates a new value chain, market structure and a different way of defining end-user subscriber value. The paper covers these topics from multiple industry stakeholder angles, and provides significant information on the promising future of Fixed Mobile Convergence to all players in this new converged value chain.

Stuart Carlaw, Research Director Wireless for ABI Research, stated, "By 2012 the total number of fixed mobile subscribers is predicted to reach 271 million. Femtocell based solutions are forecast to account for 56% of the total, with 24% and 20% respectively for UMA and VCC/SIP. 2007 and 2008 represent the incubation period for what is expected to be a rapidly growing market which will hit its inflection point in 2009."

The white paper reviews the technologies that are critical to enabling a converged services environment, among them SIP, Voice over IP (VoIP), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), and fixed and wireless broadband. As technology enablers such as UMTS/HSPA are deployed, the full benefit of FMC can be leveraged by both operators and their subscribers.

Pearson commented, "FMC is driven by subscriber needs coupled with operational efficiencies created by network modernization. After years of standards work, it is exciting for the industry to finally see commercial FMC applications deployed for the benefit of subscribers in the market such as T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home service launched in June."

Download a free copy of " Fixed-Mobile Convergence: Understanding the Marriage of Wireless and Wireline Technologies " at the 3G Americas' website, www.3gamericas.org.

About 3G Americas: Unifying the Americas through Wireless Technology

The mission of 3G Americas is to promote and facilitate the seamless deployment throughout the Americas of GSM and its evolution to 3G and beyond. The organization fully supports the Third Generation (3G) technology migration strategy to EDGE and UMTS/HSPA adopted by many operators in the Americas. The GSM family of technologies accounts for 85% of wireless mobile customers worldwide. 3G Americas is headquartered in Bellevue, WA with an office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Dallas, TX. For more information, visit our website at www.3gamericas.org.