As fixed-line telephony goes the way of the telegraph, operators are pouring money into mobile-telecoms and broadband internet.
The campaign, which has a rumoured launch date of February 14, is to promote Virgin Media's "quad play" of services - mobile, TV, broadband and fixed-line telephony.
Structural separation of different services like broadband Internet access and fixed-line telephony has worked well in Britain, the commissioner said.
Rather as Africa ignored fixed-line telephony and jumped straight to mobiles, so China might benefit from "latecomer advantage" in the field of freight transport.
One is that the Spanish economy is in a mess; the other is that most of its business is old-fashioned fixed-line telephony.
Mr Ecevit and his coalition partners this week promised to speed up the sale of Turk Telekom, the state-owned monopoly of fixed-line telephony.
It has made a £6.6bn bid for Kabel Deutschland in an effort to achieve the fabled quadruple play – offering customers mobile and fixed-line telephony, broadband internet and digital TV.
Greater regulation could result in stricter data privacy provisions as well as requirements for emergency calling services and other facilities currently the preserve of mobile and fixed line telephony services.
We have already seen cable and traditional telecom operators in the US and UK, such as Comcast, AT&T, and Virgin Media offer bundling options around mobile, fixed line telephony, broadband, and cable TV.
Voice-data convergence can cut operating costs, but the same VoIP technology is also eroding revenues from traditional fixed-line telephony, and new revenues from broadband will not fill the gap.
