New GSMA Board Looks To Speed New Services

The GSM Associations new Board today declared that shortening the time to market and ensuring the global availability of new and developing wireless services were its two key strategic goals for 2003.

Cannes, France, 19 February 2003: The GSM Associations new Board today declared that shortening the time to market and ensuring the global availability of new and developing wireless services were its two key strategic goals for 2003.

At the conclusion of its first formal meeting, the GSM Associations CEO and Board Member, Rob Conway said: Our primary goal is to accelerate the global rollout and interoperability of advanced mobile multimedia services, with emphasis on speeding the introduction of 3G services throughout the world.

We are re-invigorating the core principles behind GSMs phenomenal success, where the unique blending of operator strategy setting and guidance at the most senior executive levels and strong vendor commitment have brought the GSM world to the door step of breaking the one billion customer mark."

Our aims will be to inject strategic, market based focus to the definition of collectively identified operator needs; to condense timescales for new product and service offerings, and enhance the simplicity and seamless availability of new services we deliver to our customers. These are the keys that will unlock even further success for the GSM industry," said Conway.

We will look to help the industry by unifying the voice that speaks on behalf of our community to vendors, suppliers and the standards bodies. We are looking at a short list of specific activities -- some of which are too sensitive to reveal at this stage," said Conway. Though clearly, accelerating interoperability and roaming for networks, terminals and services were high on the agenda, as were greater consistency of terminal features and functionality, among others."

In todays marketplace, accelerating MMS interoperability is a high priority for the GSM Association and the Board. The GSMA will look at helping to drive and define terminal interoperability, availability and usability, ensuring that compelling new services can be delivered as simply and quickly as possible throughout the world, therefore encouraging increased mobile service uptake and usage.

Terminals are the most visible element of our services to the customer and we believe there is much to do to enhance interoperability, user interfaces and timely availability of terminals," said Conway.

In addition, a huge focus for the Association will be on ensuring vitality and commercial take up of W-CDMA -- the technology over which 3G services are delivered. Part of the GSMAs effort will involve correcting the misperceptions about W-CDMA.

The W-CDMA standard is the global choice of operators, and it was chosen on the basis of its robust capabilities, wide ranging multimedia possibilities, and vast potential economies of scale," said Chairman of the new GSMA Board, Craig Ehrlich.

No other standard comes close, no other standard is as open, and no other standard will provide the seamless global evolution from todays GSM with the support of the worlds largest wireless carriers. We expect more than 30 launches happening in the near term and the commitment of operators to deploy should not be doubted," he said.

The Board is determined that the GSMA will deal in facts and correct the fiction, and the facts are that W-CDMA is the defacto global 3G standard and the technology of choice for eight out of ten of the digital wireless carriers. The Board is to speak up on these issues, to correct the misinformation and misconceptions, and support the developing 3GSM industry," concluded Ehrlich.

Mauro Sentinelli, Managing Director of TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile) was elected Deputy Chairman of the new GSMA Board today.

-Ends-

About the GSM Association:

The GSM Association (GSMA) is the world's leading wireless industry representative body. It consists of more than 680 second and third generation wireless network operators working collaboratively to accelerate the implementation of collectively identified, commercially prioritised operator requirements. The Associations members provide digital wireless services to more than 800 million customers in over 190 countries of the world (end January 2003).

The GSM family of wireless communications platforms, including GSM, GPRS (General Packet Radio Services), EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution) and W-CDMA account for approximately 72 percent of the total digital wireless market today. The GSM Association is a unique organisation, with truly global reach, offering a full range of business and technical services to its members. For more information, visit the website at www.gsmworld.com.

GSM is a registered trademark, registered and owned by the GSM Association.
"GSM - The Wireless Evolution"

Contact Information:

Mark Smith
Communications Director
GSM Association
Tel: +44 207 518 0549
Fax: +44 207 518 0531
msmith@gsm.org

Or

Kevin Taylor/Clare Bragg
Companycare Communications
Tel: +44 (0) 118 939 5900
Email:
Kevin@companycare.com
clare@companycre.com

At the 3GSM World Congress:
Kevin Taylor - +44 (0)7850 858 291
Clare Bragg - +44 (0)7050 231 669