Telecommunications is one of only a few industries that has escaped frequent disruption. The last time it happened was when voice telephony disrupted telegraphy services more than 100 years ago. Such stability will likely become a fond memory.

During the next five years, industry executives will come to long for the relative calm of what seemed at the time to be the technological and regulatory turmoil of the late 1990s. Recent advances in wireless technology, such as the 802.xx family of protocols and video compression, along with increased bandwidth for traditional voice services, are creating the potential for wireless to disrupt wireline in voice and data markets.

These innovations are gradually increasing the bandwidth available throughout the wireless infrastructure without compromising the potential for mobility. By minimizing the tradeoff between bandwidth and mobility, innovations in wireless are setting the stage for widespread and bona fide disruption.

But technological innovation can only set the stage. The drama that actually plays out will depend upon the commercialization strategies chosen by specific players.

This Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Global Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Industry Group report, written by Michael Raynor of the Deloitte member firm in Canada, brings a new level of clarity and insight to the issue of when and how markets for wireless technologies will evolve. By applying the theory of "disruptive innovation" to these markets, the underlying causal mechanisms of success and failure are finally visible.

Providers of a wide range of wireless services — from 3G voice services to Wi-Fi data to pooled spectrum video — as well as those threatened by such services, will find in these pages a new way of thinking that is not available anywhere else. Read the complete report, available as a PDF file attachment below, and learn more other TMT thought leadership and research at http://www.deloitte.com/tmt/publications.