Telecoms at a crossroads.

(From Intelligent Enterprise Asia)

Byline: Gigi Onag

The multi-channel, multi-device world is still largely a dream, not least because media and telecoms companies do not want a part in content creation and management. Technology advances may change all that.

There is much talk nowadays of an ideal world where people can have media-rich content and applications delivered to their device of choice.

Imagine a person selecting a movie trailer from his handset or PC then having the entire movie delivered to a set-top box at home so he can watch the movie on his television set that evening.

Or a teenager downloading a scaled-down version of a game on his mobile phone, but choosing to play the full-featured version of the game on the PC or TV.

Developments in the world of telecommunications in the next few months should determine whether these scenarios can become reality to the community at large across the world-where voice, data, and video applications are combined and delivered with seamless quality across different channels to different devices.

Unfortunately, a convergent situation looks unlikely from where the telecoms industry is standing, with the media companies and emerging content creators on one end, the IT and telecommunications companies on …