Technology fragmentation

Is it that mobile telecoms are increasingly getting technically fragmented?

We have countless technologies that are attempting to network us while on the move. WiFi, WiMAX, GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, Bluetooth, NFC, iDEN and several others. People argue that these have different purposes but does an average consumer care? I don't think so. At the end of the day, ease of use and transparency is what matters, exemplified by the dominance of GSM worldwide.

Telecom evangelists speak of seamless mobility across heterogeneous technologies but in my point of view, either the network has to become extremely intelligent core-to-edge or the user has to provide some form of input to switch media. That is without going in other issues like billing, authentication, content translation etc...