UNITING THE MOBILE WORLD

With a total attendance of 50.000 visitors, this year1s 3GSM World Congress in the new host city of Barcelona confirmed its status as the biggest mobile show on Earth. Two distinct growth waves were at the hearth of the week’s agenda. The fist involves connecting new customers to existing services in order to bridge the digital divide, whilst the second theme concerns connecting existing customers to new services. Although very different, it was clear from the event that both offer great opportunities.

A packed auditorium of over 3.000 delegates saw GSM Association (GSMA) CEO Rob Conway open the congress and deliver a promise for “a united mobile world.” Core to this vision is the ability to provide anytime, anywhere, any device connectivity for all people and all services.

Conway began by laying out the GSMA’s priorities for 2006; ensuring that quality services are developed at market speed, an effective IP services environment is created for mobile, and a clear technology evolution path is defined. The promotion of mobile technology as the bridge to the digital divide was also cited as critical to industry growth.

The week’s major news announcement centered on the provision of quality services developed at market speed. The GSM Association and 15 of the world’s largest mobile phone operators – including the likes of China Mobile, Orange, TIM, Telefonica, T-Mobile and Vodafone – are to roll out interoperable instant messaging (IM) services that will build on the phenomenal success of text messaging.

This new approach to IM dubbed “Personal IM” – adheres to the core GSM principles of ease of-use, interoperability, initiating party pays, reliability and security. As Conway explained, there is now a “critical mass” of operators willing to work together to ensure interoperability, with the potential for 700 million mobile customers to be connected within the GSM community.

Looking even further forward, Conway noted that the GSMA is also looking at video sharing and web browsing. The latter, of course, is well advanced, with the dotmobi domain name established, but, at a practical level, style guidelines will be set up for the benefit of the consumer and to make the browsing experience mobile friendly. Meanwhile, he announced spam code of conduct to combat unsolicited SMS and MMS – specifically one that blocks text messages asking for a premium-rate response.