The traditional broadcasting and telecommunication industries have co-evolved with the developing Internet, but the technological development is making this current sectoral distinction un-sustainable. Content and service provision has already taken place across the traditional sectoral boundaries for some time. Different services can be carried on different infrastructures and the end users’ access equipment will be designed to communicate with different services. This process of fusion of content, service, infrastructure and end user equipment is denoted as convergence. This convergence process is illustrated in the Figure 1:
Figure 1: Convergence Process
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according to the European Commissions Green Paper on convergence, it can be expressed as: 'The ability of different network platforms to carry essentially similar kinds of services; and
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the coming together of consumer devices such as the telephone, television and personal computer'.
In the Green Paper it is furthermore stated that 'Convergence is not just about technology. It is about services and about new ways of doing business and of interacting with society'. This approach is interesting regarding the objective of this project to identify broader implications of the technological parameters on market development.