Rudolf Gröger, CEO for O2 Germany, opened the session, which was entitled: "Is Convergence the Ultimate Model for the Future." He says that while there is still no clear definition of convergence, telecom companies can no longer split their organizations into wireline and wireless segments.

Referring to multimedia, he said: "We have to understand that a new 'hyper-industry' is rising. And we have to tackle this fact in a consistent way by aligning our strategy, processes and organization - and above all - our mindset throughout the operation to achieve a unified, wireline and wireless management structure."

Gröger also said operators, equipment vendors and content providers alike needed to define with whom they should cooperate and with whom they should compete.

"We have to clarify who owns the customer. Then, from that perspective, it becomes necessary to build a strong brand associated with convergence capabilities," he said.

Ben Verwaayen, CEO for BT, said convergence all came down to globalization - that it is about having your desktop in the palm of your hand.

"Big companies want to send their employees all over the world," Verwaayen said. "They want the ability to get the same services and applications that they have in the office or at home everywhere they go. Furthermore they don't want to have to think about platforms. And they tell us to give them the tools to make that possible. That is convergence."

During the subsequent panel discussion, Kenneth Karlberg, president for Telia Sonera in Norway, Denmark and the Baltic countries, said that convergence was about bundling services.

"We are seeing how subscribers are starting to use, for example, social networking sites and communities directly from one mobile to another instead of between computers, as has usually been the case up until today. We focus on converging services across different devices," he said.

But Boris Nemsic, CEO for Telekom Austria Group, said convergence was not about the bundling of services. Instead it was about the devices.

"I like mobile TV, it's a great application," he said. "But I like IPTV much more."

Nemsic explained: "Let me speak as a traditional telecoms professional: What we do is we partner up with content companies. There are a lot of content-focused people in town who do that better than we do it. They can figure out what the customer wants. Then we deliver it. We have the equipment, the network and, for example, the billing solutions to make the content accessible. That is convergence."