[June 17, 2011] Why convergent charging is key to Ericsson-Telcordia deal Tweet (Connected Planet Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) On the same day that Ericsson announced it would acquire Telcordia for nearly $1 billion (CP: Ericsson deepens back-office focus with Telcordia acquisition), Infonetics released its latest report on the global convergent charging market. Infonetics quantifies the market segment in 2010 as having been $862.3 million worldwide, representing 37% growth over 2009. The firm projects the market to swell to $3.3 billion in 2015. The top four suppliers by market share, according to Infonetics, are in order Telcordia, Comverse, Ericsson, and Huawei, with Telcordia and Comverse in a dead heat for the top spot.  Ericsson's acquisition of Telcordia immediately would make it the dominant player in the rapidly growing global convergent charging market. This position is of massive significance because of the enabling role convergent charging infrastructure plays in enabling the telecom industry to deliver the global financial transaction infrastructure that's receiving so much attention today. From e-wallets, mobile money, international money transfers via mobile phones, and microcapital transactions to the secure payment and banking-like capabilities telcos want to deliver for enterprises wherever they conduct commerce in the world, convergent charging is key to extending their infrastructure into these new roles. Assuming Infonetics has measured the market correctly, Ericsson would become by far the largest supplier of this critical enabling infrastructure. According to Berg Insight, total global mobile money transactions will grow to$215 billion by 2015. Much of the hype relating to mobile money, for example, revolves around NFC technology and Google's mobile wallet initiative. But just as Google and Netflix would be dead in the water if they couldn't stand on the shoulders of the giants who provide the Internet's connectivity infrastructure, few if any of the players who want to ride the mobile money and mobile commerce waves will be able to scale massively, much less globally, without convergent charging. It will provide the foundation, deep within communications service providers' BSS infrastructure, for the transactional connectivity they need to engage users seamlessly through mobile devices over mobile operators' broadband networks. In that sense, this is the big mobile money, over-the-top play. The difference in this OTT scenario, however, is that CSPs are controlling the financial transactions and all of the data and aren't relegated to connectivity. © 2011 Penton Media [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]