Telecommunications Operators Form Alliance to Build an Open Platform

An alliance called the Wholesale Applications Community has been formed by 24 major telecommunications companies with the intention to unleash global apps potential.

Essentially, the goal of the alliance will be to create a viable, cohesive and open industry platform for mobile app developers and the alliance will serve as one point of contact for the industry and is open to all relevant parties from telecommunications operators and device manufacturers to internet service providers and application software developers.


The alliance members are América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel (News - Alert), China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, mobilkom austria group, MTN Group, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Softbank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor Group, TeliaSonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, VimpelCom, Vodafone (News - Alert) and Wind. They claimed to have dedicated themselves to create an environment for the development and distribution of mobile and internet applications irrespective of device or technology.

The group plans to work on coming up with a standard for working across platforms over the next twelve months and has targeted to unite a fragmented marketplace and create an open industry platform that benefits applications developers, network operators and mobile phone users.

These operators have access to over three billion customers around the world and device manufacturers such as GSMA, LG Electronics, Samsung (News - Alert) and Sony Ericsson are supporting this initiative. According to the community their major goal is to create a wholesale applications ecosystem that provide a simple path to market for developers to deliver the latest innovative applications and services to the widest possible base of customers around the world. The alliance will seek to unite members’ developer communities and create a single, harmonized point of entry to make it easy for developers to join in the near future.

The alliance plans to initially use both the JIL and OMTP (News - Alert) BONDI requirements, evolving these standards into a common standard within the next 12 months.

Rob Conway, CEO and member of the Board at GSMA (News - Alert) has said that the GSMA is fully supportive the Wholesale Applications Community, which will build a new, open ecosystem to spur the creation of applications that can be used regardless of device, operating system or operator.

Jonathan Arber, senior research analyst at IDC has said that attracting and retaining developers is vital for any application store offering to succeed. However, mobile application developers currently face a high level of fragmentation in the industry, in terms of both technology platforms, and individual operators' working practices. The initiative should also help to drive uptake of existing, open standards among developers, operators and manufacturers, thereby reducing fragmentation and benefiting the whole industry.