(Cannes, France, February 20, 2002) - TIM (Telecom Italia Group) today announced their support for the Open Mobile Architecture (OMA) initiative, dedicated to ensuring a global and open mobile software and services market.The Open Mobile Architecture initiative is bringing the leading industry stakeholders together to boost the early introduction of new, interoperable mobile services worldwide, utilizing the GSM/GPRS evolution and coming 3G mobile telecommunications networks adopting WCDMA technology.
Essential factors of the initiative are open and global standards implemented on uniform service platforms, allowing branded and personalised, yet interoperable mobile services and solutions to be available from many operators and over a broad array of terminals. This will promote significant growth, as well as ensure that economies of scale are enjoyed throughout the industry, including the operator community under the GSM Association umbrella.
"TIM has already since early 2000 taken proactive and concrete steps to promote interoperability in the domain of mobile services. We are pleased to endorse an open mobile architecture, increasing alignment in the industry, as it not only allows us to choose from multiple technology providers, but also lets us develop and customise applications and content into the terminal, and offer branded user experience. As long as operators are keen to promote and standardize new services based on an open standard technical architecture, it is also essential that this initiative will conduct close co-operation with the GSM association," said Mauro Sentinelli, Managing Director of TIM (Telecom Italia Group).
"As history has shown, when an industry bands together to endorse and implement to open standards, competition thrives and the market takes off," said Leif Soderberg, senior vice president and general manager of strategy and business development, Motorola's Personal Communication Sector. "We're delighted to welcome TIM to this strategic effort. Their support is indicative of the great momentum we're seeing around the globe for OMA.
"The operator community is a key force driving the open mobile architecture. Therefore Nokia warmly welcomes the commitment from Telecom Italia Mobile to open standards which will enable ubiquitous interoperability of mobile services," said Pertti Korhonen, Senior Vice President, Mobile Software, Nokia. "The increasing number of global companies participating in the initiative provides a solid foundation for a global mobile services market and will also ensure genuinely competitive products."
In November 2001, the following companies dedicated to the open mobile architecture: AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless, MM02, NTT DoCoMo, Telefonica Moviles, Vodafone, Fujitsu, Matsushita, Mitsubishi Electric, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Symbian. Other companies that have expressed their commitment to the Open Mobile Architecture initiative include: Alcatel, AU-System, BEA Systems, Inc., Borland Software Corporation, China Mobile, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, Openwave, Oracle, ST Microelectronics, Sun Microsystems, Inc., and Texas Instruments.
The participants in the Open Mobile Architecture initiative have committed to developing products and services based on open mobile architecture enablers such as WAP2.0/XHTML, MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and JavaTM technology. They will work closely with standards bodies including the 3GPP, the WAP Forum and Java Community Process (JCP). The participants will also identify new technologies that are needed to achieve openness and interoperability and map them to the appropriate standards and/or interoperability testing (IOT) body.
About the Open Mobile Architecture initiative
Open Mobile Architecture (OMA) is an industry initiative dedicated to ensuring global and open mobile software and services market. Working within the appropriate standards bodies, the OMA members will co-operate to create non-fragmented, interoperable mobile services across markets, operators and mobile terminals by identifying, endorsing and implementing open standards. All companies in the industry committed to the mobile open architecture approach are welcomed to join the initiative.
About TIM
TIM (Telecom Italia Group) is the leader in mobile telephony in Italy with 23,95 million customers and 50,7 million worldwide (at 31 December 2001). TIM operates in Europe, the Mediterranean basin and in South America.
For further information, please contact:
Federico Fabretti
TIM - Communication
Tel: + 39 06 3688 2788
mobile phone: + 335 7534 768
Fax: + 39 06 3688 2177
e-mail: federico.fabretti@telecomitalia.it