city university london school of social sciences convergence of ...

oundaries between industries by the convergence of value propositions,technologies and markets (p.426). Also, according to Bauer et al. (2003) convergencemeans „processes that blur the boundaries and/or reduce the differences betweenactivities, industries, nations and regions‟ (cited in Hacklin:2008, p.2)Convergence can also be defined as a figure, where different sectors move into eachother and constitute a new converged entity after convergence. Figure 1 representsthe sectors that converge and constitute one single entity.Figure 2.1:industriesIllustration of convergence of telecommunications, media and ITYpsilanti and Xavier (1998) state that, „convergence is not only a technologicalphenomenon, but includes services and therefore markets‟ (p.644). Since, it ispossible to define the term in different ways in terms of technology, services,markets or regulation, the definitions of the term show variety. As a concept havingthat many dimensions, several different types of convergence is defined in theliterature. For example; in its Green Paper, EC defines convergence on four differentlevels which are namely: technology and network platforms, industry alliancesand mergers, services and markets and finally policy and regulation. (EC:1997,p.2)11