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Is Vodafone’s Station the future of fixed mobile convergence?

Published on June 3rd, 2008

Vodafone, one of the largest phone companies in the world, has been slowly buying (and rolling out) fixed-line broadband services across Europe in preparation for fixed mobile convergence. The company’s plans became more concrete last week when it released a new FMC box developed in partnership with Huawei.

The device, called Vodafone Station, is essentially a switch/router for ADSL2+ service that can be shared via Fixed Ethernet or Wi-Fi across the home. It also has a removable USB key that allows adds 3G (UMTS/HSPA) service to the box.

When turned on, the Station uses the HSPA to connect to the Vodafone network, allows folks to sign up for a DSL connection, and allows seamless switching to Vodafone’s service. The box, which is currently available only in Italy, is eventually going to be released across Vodafone’s footprint…

AT&T, which is soon going to be pushing a 3G version of the iPhone, will be a good candidate for offering similar boxes. Such a device helps them overcome coverage issues, and at the same time takes a load off their wireless backhaul network. More importantly, it makes it easy enough for them to sell a bundled service and take market share away from cable companies. When viewed through that prism you can understand why the honchos at AT&T are always talking about wireless, and why cable companies are ready to spend billions to go wireless.

What he said.

3 users responded in " Is Vodafone’s Station the future of fixed mobile convergence? "

# 1 moss said, on June 3rd, 2008 at 4:41 am

The battle that Vodafone and their peers continue to lose is with VOIP.

In Europe more so than in the States, the DSL-flavor of broadband is often offered at speeds fast enough to get up to IPTV. Here in the U.S., our Telcos are such foot-draggers, every competing technology on the planet has a chance to kill landlines.

# 2 Zybch said, on June 3rd, 2008 at 12:19 pm

Here in Oz, Virgin have a similar system available. Basically its the same kind of box that gives you reasonable DSL speeds, and ’simulates’ a home phone via virgin’s wireless network. It finally lets people break free of the nasty monopoly we have here, where a single telco (Telstra) owns the whole wired network and charges other telco companies more to use for their users it than it charges their own users.

# 3 Tim (simonly king) Sanders said, on August 6th, 2008 at 6:37 am

I am curious. Vodafone is doin’ well last years and this could be interesting!

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