Convergence Summit

Underwhelmed by Convergence Summit. Do people still attend trade-shows these days?

Despite claims by vendors to the contrary, few if any providers are delivering on the promise of fixed/mobile convergence. Integrated billing and a single number to call does not FMC make... where are the business apps that will transform personal and business productivity?

Pretty clear that the FSA mandate for mobile call recoding has been poorly thought through. Rather than banks having a choice from many suppliers, what is clear is that no single supplier has really cracked this. All of the current offerings have sufficient problems in their implementations and/or commercials to make them broadly unfit for purpose. Despite rumours of major representation by banks to the FSA about this lack of a robust solution, we are now down to the last 40 days before the FSA mandate becomes a compliance requirement.

I dare say that give this a further 6 months or so, some real, credible solutions will probably emerge. But nothing so far really addresses the problem head on with a wrap that makes sense for business.

My advice would be to sign up to the best of the current vendors on the shortest of possible contracts. Rumour is some vendors are offering 3 month contract terms, so that's what I would be pushing for.