MobileIGNITE approved as MRP in 3GPP

May 31, 2006

MobileIGNITE, the industry association fostering collaboration to accelerate fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), is announcing that MobileIGNITE was accepted as the newest Market Representation Partner (MRP) of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) at the recent meeting held in Beijing, and that it has two new members to the organization: Comfone and Pandora Networks.

As a 3GPP MRP partner, MobileIGNITE joins an illustrious group of the global industry leadership groups supporting market solutions based on 3GPP standards: UMTS Forum, GSA, GSMA, IPv6 Forum, 3G Americas, TD-SCDMA Forum and TD-SCDMA Industry Alliance.

Leo Nikkari, Executive Director MobileIGNITE MOU said "MobileIGNITE fully supports the efforts of 3GPP and their contributions to global 3G markets, and we are honored to be approved as a Market Representation Partner. Our Interoperability Group efforts will provide 3GPP and the fixed-mobile convergence industry with best practices for end-to-end FMC configuration guidelines and interoperability testing based on open industry standards."

MobileIGNITE is committed to support FMC solutions that are built on open standards such as GSM/UMTS-WCDMA (3GPP), CDMA (3GPP2), SIP (IETF), IMS and 802.11/16 (IEEE).

Karl Heinz Rosenbrock, Director General of ETSI stated: "We anticipate MobileIGNITE adding a new perspective to the current global standards efforts around IMS standards developed by 3GPP, and the associated FMC standards efforts in groups like ETSI/TISPAN."

"We look forward to working with MobileIGNITE as part of the MRP community in 3GPP," said Alan Hadden, President of Global Suppliers Association (GSA), "The insight and consensus guidelines that MobileIGNITE can share regarding its FMC interoperability initiatives are a valuable addition to the 3GPP partnership."

The new members, Comfone and Pandora Networks, bring the total membership in MobileIGNITE to 39 member companies. The companies have agreed to support the group's principles of working on open standards-based interoperability and leveraging SIP based FMC service architectures that migrate to IMS. The solutions and expertise each new member provides are:

Comfone - is the recognized specialist provider of roaming services and has built on its expertise in mobile roaming and is already deploying service built on IMS.

Pandora Networks - is a provider of On-Demand IP Communications for the small or mid-sized business market. They specialize in SIP-based IP Centrex and other forms of IP communications including voice, video, messaging, collaboration, conferencing, and APIs to Salesforce and other on-demand business applications.