>> INTRODUCTION

Tomorrow's World

Once separate entities, the TMT industries - telecoms, media and technology -
are converging to shrink the globe, expand our frontiers and change our lives

The nature of business and the way society interacts continues to be revolutionised by advances in the rapidly-converging worlds of telecoms, media and technology. The go-anywhere, call-anywhere convenience of cellphones and the convergence of mobiles and IT has produced the newest and fastest-growing area of business activity.

In less than a decade, cellphone usage has already overtaken fixed-line telephony in some parts of the world. The complete deregulation of European telecoms markets will further advance the convergence of mobile telephony and internet services - the so-called third generation mobile (3G). In Germany, where at least 50 million cellphone users are forecast by early next year, probably overtaking Italy as Europe's biggest mobile market, there will be intense competition among providers as a result of the issue of 3G (UMTS) licences.

Developments resulting from the marriage of telecommunications, media and technology will become indispensable in the business world. Technology will assume an increasingly important role in the home as manufacturers upgrade their products to introduce interactive inter-net services. With the rapid expansion of communications and messaging services via the internet, industry observers are forecasting that service provider revenues will increase by 200 per cent to $16.5 billion by 2004. Unmetered access services are already being offered, particularly in the UK, but they are set to spread rapidly across the continent.

-The internet will be a standard feature in every household-

Western European cellular service subscribers alone are expected to surpass 300 million by 2004. Where will it all lead? In Germany, RTL is the first German television broad-caster to screen a soap opera exclusively on the internet. In Britain, Big Brother was the television/internet collaboration of 2000. For the general public, there will be limitless access to information, entertainment and 'infotainment' of a bewildering variety. Within a few years, the internet is expected to be a standard feature of every television set.

For the business user, the convergence of technology will yield a mobile office, with instant access to data, suppliers and clients all over the globe. The Germans are racing ahead in internet use, while in Italy, where PCs are as yet much less in evidence, there are e-business start-up companies appearing almost daily. The world's first internet-capable TV was launched by Loewe in Germany two years ago. The company joined forces with a German public TV channel, and users can surf through TV channels or connect direct to the internet with their remote control. The Italians are currently the biggest users of cellphones in Europe.

Pasta companies are among the first to have signed up to the country's first internet trading site for farm commodities. An entirely new breed of entrepreneur has emerged to corner a share of this booming market. There are the incumbents, of course, such as Telecom Italia and Deutsche Telekom. In Italy, Albacom has emerged to challenge Telecom Italia in its fixed-line business. Then there are the burgeoning service companies, which have gained technical expertise in systems management and provide business solutions. Media companies, particularly broadcasters, with their vast background in both the technical and practical production of con-tent, are ideally suited to marry their resources to the internet. It gives them a much bigger platform from which to launch their products and also gives advertisers a much wider audience.

Claims that the internet will change the way we do our shopping may be questioned by some, but the very con-cept of having dedicated e-marketplaces for specific industries makes sense in today’s global markets. The ISPs and ASPs (see glossary, page 4) are carving out their own niche markets in the knowledge that it will be the multinationals which will be using the services to streamline their overheads in terms of transport, supply lines and – a phrase already in the international businessman’s lexicon – just-in-time, or real-time deliveries.

The Finns have pushed the bound-aries of the TMT industries further than most. Among the most literate people in the world, with one in two citizens reading a daily newspaper, they are well-advanced to unleash 3G communi-cations upon the world. Meanwhile the Portuguese, the poor-est nation in the European Union, are making terrific efforts to get acquainted with 3G, e-marketplaces and interactive television. Portugal’s mobile telephony market already outperforms the entire fixed-line voice. So far, the country’s internet market remains small, consist-ing of only 200,000 dial-up accounts and barely 1,000 dedicated access subscribers in 1999.

But with the introduction of free internet services, this situation is starting to change. The spread of IT is creating some unexpected cooperation and allegiances already – dedicated e-marketplaces forged by rival car-makers that enable them to source supplies is an example. For the individual, it offers greater mobility, combined with greater access to information. No-one is sure whether there is ever going to be a point where the market for telecommunications, media and tech-nology reaches saturation. What is certain, however, is that for the foresee-able future our lives will be shaped by their development and convergence.