I mentioned last October that Orange were going to introduce a ‘convergence’ product combining Mobile 3G, GPRS, WiFi hotspots, LAN and dial up under one ‘connect’ and one bill. Well, today Orange announced ‘Business Everywhere’ which includes access to over 13,000 Wifi hotspots across the UK and the rest of the world. The pricing includes country specific flat rates.

In the near future, we will see many more converged tariffs from network operators that also include home landline usage. Tariffs will also tend to become flat rate. In this way, consumers will become less afraid of unexpected costs and this, in turn, will help the take up of new mobile products and services that uses these networks. Furthermore, the method of connection (and the actual 3G/GPRS/WiFi/LAN network being used) will become more transparent with the user just clicking on a ‘connect’ button. Again, the ease of use will aid the takeup of new services.

However, current products are only being targeted at laptop users. As far as Orange is concerned, PDAs and Smartphone access isn’t being considered and it could be a while before we see converged connection software on these devices.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2005 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Mobile, Network Operators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.