"The value of mobility can't be overstated."

Before you rack your brain trying to figure out which industry pundit uttered those words, let me save you the trouble. He wasn't of this industry. In fact, he wasn't even speaking about this industry. This simple yet universal truth was spoken recently by Matt Golombek, a scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratories who has one of the best gigs--or at least the coolest gig--in the world. For the last year he has traveled the surface of Mars through his surrogates, the rovers known as Opportunity and Spirit.

How cool is that?

The statement holds true for his purposes, but it also holds true in other domains. It's true for pursuing a career path. It's as true for the disabled as it is for NFL quarterbacks. It's true for just about everything except, perhaps, for toddlers near the tops of stairs. It certainly holds true for the communications industry.

Mobility is the ultimate goal of all service providers, landlocked or not. Being truly mobile will require the seamless transition between any and all network types using any and all kinds of devices. In other words: fixed/mobile convergence. The very idea has been little more than marketing spiel the last few years, but the spiel is beginning to sound plausible.

The architectures, software and devices are nearly ready. The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), which has quickly replaced SIP and VoIP as the new buzzword (or buzz-acronym), will see deployment this year. It will be limited, but it will be the next step in the long, steady physical transformation of our networks.

And that transformation didn't start with SIP or with IP or even with the digital switch. From Almon Strowger's first electromechanical switch in 1889 to the first deployed No.1 crossbar system in 1938 and beyond, the telecom network has gone through transition after transition. From the No.5 crossbar's dominance until around 1978 and on through the first 4ESS in 1976, and from the days of in-band signaling to out-of-band, we have seen a great many "next big things."

Convergence is simply the next big thing. However, there is a next big difference. The success of convergence and of the IMS and of SIP-based, presence-enabled networks, and of global interoperability and of ubiquity and therefore of mobility, will depend on something no other transition has had to factor in: open systems.

It is now time for all the proponents of open architectures and open interfaces to be true to their glasnost and work cooperatively to build the next generation of networks--or network, if you see it that way. If not, rather than leaving subsequent generations a system on which they can build, we will leave them a valiant but failed hybrid mess that they will have to figure out how to dismantle.

It is encouraging so far to see that the pressure to adhere to standards and build open systems is mounting fast and may prove unstoppable. It's a concept, a meme if you will, with a sense of mobility all its own.

E-mail me at tmcelligott@primediabusiness.com.