A large part of what happens with e-commerce over the next few years will depend on several convergences taking place. It will also depend on whether, for reasons of greed or stupidity, those convergences are built right into the principal blockages or bottlenecks that have afflicted the Web since day one. 

The most interesting convergence taking place is the one so neatly symbolized by the AOL-TIME Warner merger: that among network computing, telephony and broadcast. At a functional level, many of the convergences are taking place in your pocket or handbag. Your digital 'phone is rapidly becoming a narrowband access point to the Internet. At the same time, your PDA has probably overtaken the power of the PC you had on your desktop five years ago. And for a mere couple of hundred quid you can equip it with a modem. 

Fifteen years ago, an earnest young salesman sat in my office demonstrating an online database. He arrived equipped with a portable computer and a modem with an acoustic coupler. Memory tells me the thing fired itself up to 2,400 bps and a fairly awesome cps (character per second) rate. Of course, it was rendering basic ASCII, but the performance really wouldn't be put to shame by the machine sitting under my desk today. And for a basic keyword search of a flat database, it would probably outperform most systems delivered over the Web. 

You can pull most of the components of convergence together on a e-commerce site if you want to. Internet telephony has taken a major leap forward with the compression and quality of the HearMe ( http://www.hearme.com ) voice system. With a reasonable modem and decent traffic conditions, Microsoft's NetMeeting and others will deliver quite acceptable voice/video systems. A little bit of fiddling with code makes it possible to provide the visitor to the site with most of the functionality of a call centre. 

That same Web site -- at a somewhat higher server and line overhead -- can deliver quite acceptable broadcast-type goodies, such as streaming radio or video. A bit Heisenberg-like, you shouldn't really try to do both at once unless you know your users are on high bandwidth DSL or better. 

Bandwidth is definitely bottleneck one. It was when we connected at 75/300 bps, and at 2,400, at 9,600, at 14,000 and so on. At each step, it seems, we are doomed to lag behind the demands of the neat stuff people want to send us. 

And just as we finally have acceptably-priced broadband coming down the pike towards us, the industry is telling us that what most of us really really want to do is participate in an eBay auction or buy some shares on eTrade through our portable phone. Back to the joys of narrowband. 

One of the great hidden benefits of narrowband was that it drove the need for tight compression and fast slick code. Client software got fatter, which probably contributed to beating off the challenge of the Network Computer -- the dream of returning to a 1950s model of centralized computing with a world of dumb terminals.

The drive to wireless and the dream of fully converged wireless networking are as ancient as the prophecies of Negroponte. And that dream shall doubtless be fulfilled by broadband in the fullness of time. Indeed, some developers are actually worried that the sustained throughput of the PCI bus will be a limiting factor in the enjoyment of wireless broadband on your personal PC. You should be so lucky as to have such a problem. 

Sadly, wireless continues to be driven primarily by telcos, whose main interest lies in competing with additional premium services. 

This is bottleneck number two. Whether over wire or wireless, the telcos' buried assets are strangling convergence. They should be concentrating on mobility. The developments in operating hardware are all coming from there; just look at Nokia, Psion (+ IBM!), Ericsson and Motorola. 

I have cheerfully been writing off a third model for convergence, this one fairly static. I have always argued that WebTV tried to mix oil and water, but since my much venerated auntie has started sending me e-mail from her television (knocked out while they rack up the balls for the next frame), I have been forced to reconsider. And surely the driving force of DotCom advertisers, for whom TV-internet interactivity is as manna in the desert was to the Israelites, is not likely to be ignored. Only a foolish person would ignore both his auntie and the Saatchi brothers. 

So convergence is all about us, yet it is ignored by perhaps 99% of e-commerce sites. Their owners persist in the belief that e-commerce is direct mail online.

E-commerce development, sadly, moved from the hand of graphics retreads, who charged huge sums to plaster an online brochure with enormous animated GIFs, to the equally guilty hands of database developers who charged even huger sums to move catalogues online and hook them into back office systems. Where on earth were sales directors or PR chiefs while all these millions were being spent? 

Chalk up blockage three at the same time you rack up another key convergence. Theoretically (all the annual reports say this is true, so it must be), all of a company's resources, skills and functions are converging and focusing on the customer. E-commerce provides the theoretical vehicle for this to happen. The blockage is the lack of vision of developers, designers and consultants who believe that an online mail piece or catalogue offers a new and more fulfilling level of shopping experience. 

The final area of convergence and blockage is financial. Over the last decades of the last century and millennium [both yet to expire - Roger], the world's myriad systems of exchange tumbled before humble slices of plastic with the magic names 'MasterCard' and 'Visa'. So armed, an ordinary person could travel much of the world, never having to trouble himself with mundane cash. A simple, universal and almost instant means of exchange is a key convergence to enable e-commerce, and in turn be driven by e-commerce. 

Yet that same system is a major blockage. High commission rates are a major disincentive. We particularly enjoyed a visit to Web Transaction Services ( http://www.wtsbank.com/ ), whose terms of engagement bring a tear of gratitude welling into one's eye. Add to these transaction costs the mulcting a customer will receive if the purchase involves a foreign currency, and the financial costs may well exceed 25% of the cost of the transaction. The absence of a safe and reliable microbilling system holds back a tidal wave of new business models for content delivery. 

In each case, key technologies already exist to propel the expansion of e-commerce forward. In each case, the desire of incumbents to protect legacy systems and revenue models imposes major blockages. 

None of this is new. Think railways and roads, or telegraph and telephone. Better yet, get copies of the Financial Times for this date in 1970, 1980 and 1990. Look up the top 100 technology companies. Compare, contrast and comment. 

Then please do drop us a note.