Consolidation among ISPs?

The new policy for Internet service providers, issued by the department of telecommunications, is unlikely to make any impact on the poor level of Internet penetration in India, when that should be the primary goal of any such policy, reports Business Standard.

For its part, the department has tried to recognise the logic and inevitability of convergence. It has sought to remove the differences in the regulatory regimes for different categories of service providers. It has done this by, for example, bringing ISPs under the same revenue-sharing arrangement as telecoms service providers, without subjecting the core business of ISPs, Internet services, to revenue-sharing.

The department's one-point programme should be to aid convergence and remove restrictions on who can do what. It would have secured full marks if it had not restricted the ISPs' ability to offer Internet telephony.

Watching Paris Hilton walking out of jail via You-Tube on a mobile telephone screen is only one of the benefits information junkies can realise through the latest convergence of multimedia and telecoms technologies, says Asia Media.

However, convergence can lead to chaos, where parties are hard to be identified and interaction of power plays can be hard to predict.

In order to anticipate changes and channel advances in technologies and ideas into a coherent growth stream, stakeholders in the ICT sector have created a formulating roadmap.

Voice 2 Voice, the UK subsidiary of Convergence Technologies Group, has completed the new multi-site contracts in England and Wales, says CNN Money.

The company has delivered converged communications systems for Hambleside Danelaw, part of the Hambleside International Group.

In addition, Voice 2 Voice has supplied systems to multi-franchise luxury car company Rybrook Group.