HGI AND FMCA
COOPERATION - PROVIDING BEST CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE POSSIBLE
The
Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) and the Fixed Mobile
Convergence Alliance (FMCA) have entered a formal
cooperation agreement that will see the two leading bodies
collaborate towards ensuring widespread availability of
fully interoperable home gateways, access points and devices
that deliver the best user experience possible. The two
industry bodies together represent 36 telecom operators and
over 1 billion customers around the world who
stand to benefit from the development of
Convergence services.
With customer needs at the very heart of this
relationship,
the
two organizations will formulate a common message on product
interoperability and ease of use requirements, harnessing
support from leading vendors as well as standards bodies to
further enhance industry alignment and adoption of
convergence products and services.
“This
agreement
demonstrates the importance that leading
operators and vendors across the world are placing on
meeting growing customer demand for fully interoperable
Convergence services”
said Rodrigo Donazzolo, FMCA Programme Director. “The
two organisations will be able to rapidly share technical
information and knowledge about convergence requirements for
the home environment, drawing on each other’s experiences
and reducing the time for innovative new services to hit the
market.”
Marking an important milestone in the
increased availability of Convergence services, members of
the HGI and the FMCA will
jointly review the product requirements and
technical specifications generated by their various working
groups. The focus will be on the delivery of a richer user
experience in the broadband home, allowing customers to
benefit from far greater interoperability, ease of use and
seamlessness of gateways, devices and applications.
“The HGI and the FMCA are both driven by
customer requirements and are
jointly addressing convergence issues and
challenges to stimulate the environment for truly global
convergence solutions.”
said Chief Technology Officer at the HGI, Paolo Pastorino.
“The synergy between the home gateway and convergent devices
within the residential network, such as SIP handsets or Set
Top Boxes, is essential in driving the use of advanced
services in the home. The close working relationship that
we have with the FMCA, and with other major industry bodies,
is key to our success as we strive to unify the product
requirements of the world’s telecom operators.”
Underpinning the relationship will be the
strategic alignment of the HGI’s Release 2.0 and the FMCA’s
Product Requirements Definition, PRD Release 3.0. These are
detailed technical documents providing telecom-operator
guidance for the convergence of services, networks and
devices in the broadband home.
Both the FMCA PRD Release 3.0 and HGI Release
2.0 are scheduled for completion in Q3 2007.
Ends
For further information, please visit
www.homegatewayinitiative.org or email
contact@homegatewayinitiative.org.
For all media enquires, please email howard@bcspr.co.uk
or call +44 (0)115 948 6901.
Click here
for pdf version
About HGI
The HGI was
founded and launched by nine telecom operators in 2004, and
now has members from five continents, representing the
entire spectrum of actors in the broadband home arena. The
main tasks of the HGI are to establish technical and
interoperability specifications and provide input to
standardization bodies. For more information on HGI, please
visit
www.homegateway.org.
About
FMCA
The Fixed-Mobile Convergence Alliance (FMCA)
is a global, non-profit organisation focused on providing
today's and tomorrow's Convergence customers with
high-quality, seamless and easy to use products and
services.
Representing a global base of over 850
million customers who stand to benefit from the development
of Convergence products and services, its objective is to
ensure, through collaboration with industry, that devices,
access points, applications and underlying networks
interoperate to deliver the best user experience possible.
For
more information please visit:
www.thefmca.com
