Asian mobile operators create mobility initiative

Five leading mobile operators in the Asia-Pacific region announced yesterday that they have teamed up to form the Asia Mobility Initiative (AMI), Asia’s first initiative which aims to enhance mobile users’ experience, especially in the area of mobile data.

The five operators involved are CSL (Hong Kong), Maxis (Malaysia), MobileOne (Singapore), Smart (Philippines) and Telstra (Australia), with a combined subscriber base of 20 million.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) underlines the aims of AMI, which will collaborate to provide subscribers’ with easier access and enhanced experience in mobile data services by providing them with the same standards of seamless and reliable data communications that they currently enjoy today with voice calls.

This is to be achieved by ensuring content sharing, inter-operatorability and cooperation on new platforms and devices. AMI members will also be sharing their best practices to benefit their subscribers.

AMI has taken the first step to provide their subscribers with joint services by linking partners’ existing portals and by beginning to share existing premium content – bringing an entire new range games are already enjoying the benefits of this initiative in terms of improved speed to market, the sharing of product development experience and development costs.

AMI has also already begun to put in place a number of inter-network services designed to improve subscribers’ experience as they travel abroad.

Services to be available when subscribers roam on AMI member networks include the ability to use GPRS (general packet radio services) services, send MMS (multimedia messaging services) pictures and CLI (caller line identification callers. Increasingly customer will enjoy access to local information and content when abroad, with further developments in the pipeline.

In these developments, AMI’s focus is to improve services and widen subscriber choice without affecting its members’ existing supplier and roaming arrangements.

AMI is not an exclusive group and will consider expanding once the core group of five operators has established its platforms and services.

Participation from other operators will enable subscribers to experience a more consistent level of services and experience as they travel abroad.