Last week Europe was witness to a rare phenomenon. Two centuries after the French Revolution, the junta responded to calls for flash mobile phone strikes in Italy and Lebanon. First, Beirut-based Judean People's Front called for a 24 hour embargo of mobile phone operators. They were soon joined by a call from Rome-based underground consumer group Intesaconsumatori. And for some time, cell phone talk came to a near standstill.

The reasons behind this protest? Increasing SMS charges, poor metering/reporting of SMS, fraudulent promos, unreasonable inter-connect charges, useless services like logos, ring-tones and confusing tariff cards - all designed to milk the consumer.

Notoriety
Apart from complex (designed to confuse?) rate structures & falsely worded promotions, telecom giants are also infamous for paying unreasonable sums to their senior executives. To date, this was restricted to severance pay, retirement benefits and super-annuation. But recently, mobile phone colossus Vodafone went a giant step further. Its CEO was paid a "Re-locating Allowance" of nearly U.S. $ 2 million to re-locate from U.S.A. to U.K. !

Such abnormally high compensation may signal that the "poor" telecom cos. need to pick the pockets of their much poorer consumer to "retain" their senior executives !

Anyway, it looks like enlightened consumers will not take such high-handed behaviour, lying down. The masses seem aroused and ready to protest against the plutocrats. And the first sign may be reflected in the symbol of our times - mobile telephony.

One Man's Problem - Another's Opportunity ?
Bad times for one segment usually brings opportunities for another.

Thus a number of fixed-line operators (giant telecom cos. who till recently, were used to monopolies or duopolies) are trying to re-build their revenue models by promoting fixed-mobile convergence. Their opportunity of a lifetime.

British Telecom, Swisscom, Korea Telecom, Brasil Telecom, Rogers Wireless (Canada) and NTT Japan have united to form an alliance - to offer unified telecom services which can seamlessly transfer calls from cell networks to fixed-line networks or even local WLAN networks - based on subscriber's current accessibility. With another 15 major telecom operators "expected to join", the alliance may well become a force to reckon with.

These companies' plan to develop and promote a common approach to seamless use of services across both mobile and fixed networks is expected to marry multiple technologies like Bluetooth, WLAN to existing 3G & CDMA technologies.

Everybody knows that telephony minutes are migrating from fixed to mobile networks as the younger generation skips fixed telephony and goes straight to mobile. (Similarities with newspaper & Internet media, anyone ?)

Not surprising that fixed-line telecom cos. are ready to go all out to utilize their existing fixed line resources by tapping into the expected customer demand for integrated telephony. This may not only halt the decline of their fixed line business, but actually end up creating a new business model based on fixed-mobile convergence.

Incidentally, the bedrock of the fixed line-mobile convergence concept is "cost benefit to the user". A case of a greedy (mobile phone) industry breeding its own Nemesis ?