[The Mobile community moves toward an open architecture and services philosophy.]

London, UK -- The GSM Association, the global voice of GSM mobile network operators, has today welcomed a recent announcement made at Comdex by suppliers such as Matsushita, Mitsubishi Electric, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens, Sony Ericsson and others reaffirming the Association's strong principles regarding open mobile architecture enablers.

"We welcome the statement made at Comdex. It clearly shows commitment to the GSM Association's key and founding principles of open, non proprietary approaches to the market," said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association. "We also compliment Nokia on offering its portfolio of software IPR on an open basis - this is a trend that we have seen gather pace, and we welcome and encourage it.

"As the hub of the operator community, the GSM Association is clearly the legitimate and best positioned global group to foster and coordinate the open mobile services market philosophy," he adds.

The commitment to drive forward these principles builds on the momentum created by the GSMA's unprecedented "M-Services Initiative", launched earlier this year, aimed at developing operators' requirements through a consistent global framework to create compelling mobile Internet services.

"We view the recent Comdex announcement as fully complementary to the Association's M-Services Initiative," said Conway. "We are delighted by the uniform industry desire for a level of consistency of mobile services - this will continue to be good for the industry, for our operator community and ultimately very good for the consumer," he added.

The "M-Services Initiative" was the creation of the global operator community - some 480 operator members of the GSM Association - to address what operators saw as growing fragmentation of mobile Internet services.

Many leading operator members behind M-Services have also welcomed the stated commitment to open mobile architecture, as fully supportive of the Association's members Initiative:

At Orange, Yves Martin, Head of Customer Equipment and Chairman of the GSM Association's M-Services Interest Group said: "Orange welcomes the approach shown by the Vendors and Operators at Comdex as it is fully supportive of the M-Services Initiative. The GSM Association has already identified the major risk of not having both open standards and an open approach in certain technologies - in particular, the wireless data services market might suffer from a lack of coordination between players in the market and we regard such a statement as important.

"The GSMA's M-Services Initiative is already in an advanced status regarding the features targeted, and as operators will play an important role in the distribution of services towards the user, we would like to see the operator community remain the primary leader in such initiatives," added Martin.

Miguel Menchen, General Manager for Services and Platforms at Telefonica Moviles, said: "Telefonica Moviles is one of the operators that has promoted mobile open architecture, since we understand that agreement on this issue will help drive business growth in the cellular industry.

"The GSM Association is the right forum for us to coordinate our efforts with other operators so that we can together reach agreements with the manufacturers," added Menchen.

Mauro Sentinelli, Managing Director of Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) said: "Taking into account the GSM business model based on both full competition on marketing mix and cooperation on technical standards, TIM fully supports the commitment to open standards with an open approach. This announcement follows the path of the GSMA's "M-Services Initiative" presented last June and just launched by TIM, as part of its Christmas campaign."

Meanwhile, Mike Short, VP, Industry Relations & Standards of mmO2 plc - one of the signatories of the Comdex announcement - said: "mmO2 welcomes this open mobile architecture announcement as being fully supportive and complementary to the M-Services Initiative.

"We fully support the commitment to open standards and we encourage a collaborative approach to setting standards that will enable the mobile industry to rapidly roll out the new "data wave" services," he added.

The GSM Association is currently coordinating widespread industry input to the evolution of M-Services with a consultative process for Phase II?s M-Services "Operator Requirements" due for publication in early 2002. Phase II - builds on the principle of open architecture, defining operators" requirements with the full cooperation of many parties across the industry to enable seamless accessibility of services by consumers.

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