The Fixed-Mobile Convergence Alliance, formed in mid-2004, was a global non-profit organisation for improving products for providing

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between fixed and mobile networks. The FMCA was incorporated as a not-for-profit association under New York law in August 2006. The Alliance had a membership base of 20 leading global telecom operators, most of which were integrated telecom operators owning both

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and

mobile Mobile may refer to: Places * Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city * Mobile County, Alabama * Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S. * Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels * Mobile ( ...

networks. The included vendor affiliation programme made the operators able to work closely with the associate members, who were all telecommunication vendors.

Members

The alliance was founded by six companies: British Telecom, NTT,

Rogers Wireless Rogers Wireless Inc. is a Canadian wireless telephone company headquartered in Toronto, providing service nationally throughout Canada. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rogers Communications. The company had revenues of just under $15.1 billi ...

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Korea Telecom KT Corporation ( Hangul: 주식회사 케이티), formerly Korea Telecom, is a South Korean telecommunications company. KT is the second-largest wireless carrier in South Korea, with 16.493 million subscribers as of Q4 2017. The formerly full ...

and Swisscom. The purpose of this alliance was to encourage seamless integration of

and

telephone services (

Technological convergence Technological convergence is the tendency for technologies that were originally unrelated to become more closely integrated and even unified as they develop and advance. For example, watches, telephones, television, computers, and social media ...

). The member operators had a customer base of over 850 million customers and collaborated with member vendors towards accelerated development and availability of Convergence products and services in areas such as devices, access points and home gateways, roaming and innovative applications.

Standards

In order to accomplish its goals, the FMCA developed close relationships with leading Standards Development, Specification and Certification Organisations (SDO/Fora), including the

Wi-Fi Alliance The Wi-Fi Alliance is a non-profit organization that owns the Wi-Fi trademark. Manufacturers may use the trademark to brand products certified for Wi-Fi interoperability. History Early 802.11 products suffered from interoperability problems be ...

Wireless Broadband Alliance Founded in 2003, the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) undertakes programs and activities to address business and technical issues, as well as opportunities, for member companies. WBA work areas include standards development, industry guidelines, ...

Home Gateway Initiative The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) was a nonprofit trade organization to discuss the key specifications and standards of residential gateways, also known as home gateways. It was founded by telephone companies (Belgacom, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Franc ...

and 3GPP. The FMCA actively contributed towards the delivery of existing and emerging standards that were relevant to FMCA product and service requirements. The FMCA did not aim to create standards but rather to accelerate the adoption of the Convergence technologies by encouraging consistency across product and equipment standards.

Disbanding

The FMCA was disbanded in March 2010, allegedly because of lack of demand for its services.

References

{{Reflist BT Group Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Rogers Communications KT Group Telephony Fixed mobile convergence Strategic alliances