The challenges of compliance [technology convergence]

With technology convergence increasing, manufacturers are facing a bewildering array of diverse regulations that they need to comply with for their products to be successful. The European Commission´s Convergence Green Paper discusses technology convergence in relation to its relevance to the Information Society, and therefore confines itself to consideration of telecommunications, media and IT sectors. Within these sectors it defines technology convergence as the ability of different network platforms to carry essentially similar kinds of services, or the coming together of services in consumer devices such as the telephone, television and personal computer. Because these are the areas which most affect everyday life, as well as a large proportion of product designers, they are the primary consideration of this article, but technology convergence presents manufacturers of all sorts of consumer and industrial equipments with a difficult challenge in bringing new products to market, especially a global market.