Web and mobile convergence

Abstract

This article examines the evolution of the ‘open mobile web’ during its early phase of development, at the time when third-generation (3G) mobile networks were first launched. The ‘site’ chosen for the study was T-Mobile, a global mobile operator that was developing Europe’s first open mobile web service. Through interviews with its employees, the analysis shows how a change took place in the self-reflections of the telecoms industry with regard to the ways it was using various historical narratives. That rhetorical adjustment tied the mobile industry to the World Wide Web and its industry but did so in complex and contested ways. The analysis of this period of development is shown to have constituted the formation phase of the contemporary complexities of the ubiquitous web and its industries.