Internet Revolution in Telecom

The convergence of telecommunications, computing and content industries has been one of the major trends during the recent years. The convergence changes the digital service market from the existing vertical "pipes" to a more general horizontal structure. As a result of this development the integrated service-network-terminal connections is resolved into generic services available to multipurpose terminals through Internet. In this paper we consider the horizontal development, its effects on telecom services and, in particular, what the development would imply to the communications industry. We explain also why mobile services have been slow in horizontal development, and which disruptive points may drive this development in the mobile services value chain