ITU Telecom World 2003

October 15, 2003
Software vital to telecom industry's growth: Bill Gates

GENEVA -- In a keynote address to the telecom industry, Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect, Microsoft Corp., described how software is the key to enabling a new generation of telecommunication business offerings that will help meet increasing demands of customers and present service providers with an opportunity to drive new revenue streams. During his keynote address to over 3,000 delegates at the ITU Telecom World 2003, Gates showcased Microsoft's technology applications and opportunities for telecom companies worldwide, and announced a new initiative with Vodafone Group to develop enabling technology specifications for mobile Web services.

Voicing optimism about the future of telecom, Gates offered a glimpse of the software-powered services that he said would help empower customers by allowing them to connect to information and services, when and where they want. He said that developers, technology providers and service providers can harness the power of Web services to create productivity tools for IT workers as well as communications tools that help connect people's lives.

Gates said: "Microsoft continues to play an active role in supporting open standards and interoperability in the telecom industry. This, combined with our push for unified developer tools and an open execution environment, will enable Web services to flourish. Building a healthy ecosystem for the industry is crucial to driving the usage of this new generation of offerings, which will drive higher ARPU for the service providers."
He elaborated on the need for industry standards, suggesting that they would foster a larger ecosystem for companies to participate in industry opportunities, improve time to market for products that interoperate, drive higher volumes faster, thereby reducing costs and stimulating greater adoption, and allow innovation to differentiate and enhance features and performance while ensuring interoperability.

In a focal point of the keynote address, Gates and a representative from Vodafone jointly announced an initiative to develop enabling technology specifications for mobile Web services, designed to extend mobile services to the PC world and offer application developers new opportunities. The two companies shared an outline of their vision to help create mobile Web services standards that would utilise existing XML-based Web services architecture to expose mobile network services, such as location, billing, mobile messaging and authentication, to the broadest audience of developers. Advancing Web services into the mobile space will enable new market opportunities and business models for mobile network operators and developers. This collaboration on mobile Web services will accelerate the convergence between PC and mobile applications and services.

The Microsoft TV team announced plans for the development of a new Internet Protocol television (IPTV) delivery solution to enable cable and telecommunications operators to offer improved and next-generation TV services over existing broadband networks. This initiative will bring together state-of-the-art technologies from Microsoft and other industry leaders in an integrated, end-to-end solution that will support the full range of pay-TV services while scaling to millions of TV subscribers. Microsoft TV announced it is working with Bell Canada and Reliance Infocomm of India to create and test new services for consumers using the IPTV solution.