Will it converge?

By Didier PH Martin

This is a question my neighbor asked me last week about the convergence of voice, data and video. "Since everything is now practically in digital format, why is it not yet all coming in the same pipe?" he asked frustrated and puzzled. It may be sooner than we think I replied.

In fact in some part of the world it is happening. Just take our south neighbors for example, COX communication in the USA actually offers digital telephony to its subscribers. More than half a million COX customers moved from ma Bell to their cable provider for all their information transportation needs. Most of these subscribers get also from COX their Internet access, their television content. Some even not longer go to the local video rental store since COX started offering video on demand in some areas.

In New York a startup named Vonage, after 10 month of operation signed up 10 000 subscribers who said goodbye to ma Bell and moved their telephony service to Vonage. Several of these customers said that they keep their mobile phone when on the move and use Vonage phone over broadband when at home. They now pay less than for their previous account with Verizon and get a lot more for their bucks.

And from my own experience, when I was living in New York last fall, I had my movies on demand provided by CinemaNow.com or MovieLink.com. These movies where as recent as I could get from the video rental store and no, they where not provided by my cable vendor. When in the mood to watch a movie I just started my PC connected to the big screen TV, navigated to Movielink.com, selected a movie and then enjoyed watching that movie when I wanted. The quality was near that of a DVD. My phone was connected on the cable modem and I subscribed to Vonage which gave me a local phone number so that I could be reached in the 212 area. I wasn't paying a dime for long distance calls within the continental USA. And I got more services available on my phone than needed. The coolest feature was the capability to transfer calls from my home number to my mobile phone when on the move (and vise versa when at home). The only connection I got with the external world was my cable wire. No phone line, no ma Bell bills to pay.

Will it converge? You bet it will and sooner than expected.