BOSTON--Landline companies have a future, if they capitalize on convergence possibilities and learn how to make complex services simple for customers to use, Embarq CEO Dan Hesse told the VON crowd today.

Embarq, which operates only local service, is losing market share to stand-alone wireless and to cable, he admitted, but by offering new fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) services and making convergence convenient to their customers, the company can remain relevant, he asserted.

Two key technology changes factor into this – first, the home phone needs to be a digital device, with a screen and second, the PC should become the heart of the home communications network, he said. “It is the fulcrum of convergence,” Hesse said.

Embarq, which buys and resells wireless services from Sprint, along with phones and its own rate plans, has enabled its customers to combine their home phone and wireless service, not only getting one bill, but also using FMC to move off the wireless network in the home and at work.

“We want you to turn your phone off when you come home,” he said. “Regardless of whether someone calls your home phone or your cell phone, you can ring your home phone. We turn the meter off on your cell phone.”

That makes Embarq’s wireless plan much more cost-competitive, he said. In addition, however, the company will launch an integrated directory which syncs up cell phone directories with Microsoft Outlook directories on the PC and provides network storage and backup for the director as well. That enables consumers to look up numbers on their home phone that are stored elsewhere and makes calling more convenient while also “moving usage in the home back to landline devices,” Hesse said. As home phones go digital, some content, such as weather and stock quotes, can be made available on the home phone without having to boot up a PC, he added.

As wireless data ramps up, wireline data maintains an advantage in bandwidth that is real, he also maintained. “For applications like sideloading [downloading content to an iPod or other device], we believe that landline will be able to maintain a speed advantage over wireless,” he said. “When you are talking about really big files, time becomes precious.”

Embarq is encouraging its customers to view their wireless service “like a sleeping bag – you’re glad to have it when you are camping in the woods, but when you walk in your house, you look at the big soft comfy king-sized bed” that is the landline, Hesse said.

The PC becomes the cockpit of mobile devices and communications, he added, and Embarq is delivering a portal that makes it simple to operate converged voice applications, email, security, content and more. Simplicity has driven most technology revolutions, he added, from VCRs to one-rate wireless plans to digital video recording.

Hesse also pointed to macro trends, such as the convergence of the business and consumer markets, as more consumers carry smart phones or other devices that keep them constantly connected to the office, but also enable them to do consumer applications on their business devices, he said. Content will increasingly have a “contextual segmentation,” based not on identity or geography but on what the consumer is engaged in doing. Micro segmentation and mass personalization will continue to make niche content available to a broader audience, and time-shifting will do to video what Amazon.com did to book-selling – make much more specialized content available to a wide audience, he said.