Mobile communications dominate TMA 2000

The Telecoms Managers Association (TMA) is a club for communications techies who wax lyrical on the relative merits of switching equipment? Wrong. The small army of professionals at Brighton earlier this month for the TMA 2000 conference have cast off their parochial past and are now at the hub of a communications revolution.

The issues up for discussion show the changing face of the organisation. How can you outsource the corporate intranet? How do you turn the call centre into a contact centre? What's involved in implementing a unified messaging service? It's no longer about the technology itself but how to apply the technology.

This is because many of the association's 2000 members are managing directors of telecoms companies, or senior managers running the intranets of the largest multinationals. All of its 2000 members spend at least £1m a year on telecoms and a recent survey showed an increasing number have responsibility for IT or finance, as well as telecoms.

Typically, it is the internet that is changing everything. Members' job responsibilities have been increasing rapidly. This is due to changes in corporate infrastructures caused by the spread of the internet, voicemail systems and mobile phones.

The most visible manifestation of this change in focus is its recent name change. Last month, the venerable 42-year-old body formerly known as the TMA became officially known as the Communications Management Association (CMA), although its annual three-day conference and the host of training materials produced by its commercial arm, TMA Ventures, will continue to use TMA as a brand name.

Ringing the changes
A highlight of TMA 2000 included mobile phone operator Vodafone's announcement of plans to drive down roaming charges to its largest corporate customers from early next year.

"Multinational customers are getting increasingly concerned at the high costs of roaming and want to see them cut," said delegate Simon Buzza, senior global accounts manager, Vodafone Global Commercial Services.

Vodafone's list of corporate concerns is headed by the cutting of charges which originate abroad. "We have acknowledged that roaming is expensive and that tariffs are far too complex," said Buzza. "There are 120 different tariffs applied by operators in Europe alone."

Vodafone is developing flat rate roaming charges, which it would like to implement in 32 European countries. But to date it has only managed to secure deals in 15. The issue has become a personal and professional mission of chief executive Chris Gent. In common with BT, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone wants to have a global footprint, although it faces a tough financial battle to achieve it.

Like other telecoms operators, Vodaphone has made heavy capital commitments. It paid £6bn for a third-generation mobile licence in the UK alone. This has prompted speculation about how it will find the money to build the next generation of infrastructure necessary to provide new services.

The problem of how to fund investment in expensive next-generation services, while cutting the cost of your existing charges, was an issue for TMA delegates and speakers. If, as Buzza claims, new flat rate roaming tariffs could shave 20 per cent to 30 per cent off average existing charges, the question still remains how Vodafone would find the money to invest in new infrastructure.

Making waves
Part of the answer lies in the fact that the company will offer this service on a restricted basis to corporates with more than 5000 mobile phones. The scheme begins on 1 January 2001, and will offer the cheapest rates to the biggest customers to retain their business. Vodafone believes the move will be copied by other mobile phone operators.

The company says it eventually wants flat rate charges to apply to all calls originating in the European countries in which it operates, but so far it has secured the agreement of only nine of the 15 countries where it has operations or partnerships. It is in negotiations with its remaining partners to encourage them to move to the new flat rate tariff.

"In future we will see one global rate for roaming," said Buzza. He predicted that this would happen in stages, with single rates first appearing for the US, Europe and the Pacific regions.

Another issue of concern to multinationals is the lack of management information surrounding corporate mobile phones. "Mobile phone growth rates has been exponential," said Buzza.

"They have crept into organisational budgets because of individual requirements. Originally it was not a corporate issue but suddenly corporates found themselves with vast numbers of staff using mobile phones and having to develop strategies to control their usage."

"Inventory management has become a nightmare. Phones are even left in drawers which nobody uses which they continue to pay for," Buzza claimed.

Vodafone's new web-based secure mobile phone management information system is being piloted in the US, UK, Greece and the Netherlands. "Trialists are very happy," said Buzza, as Vodafone estimates a 10 per cent cut in phone bills.

TMA 2000: Who exhibited what

This year, more than 400 companies bought space at the TMA 2000 exhibition, which is organised by TMA Ventures. Exhibitors were there to showcase new products and services to an estimated 7000 to 20,000 visitors.

Among those launching products or services were the following:

• EHPT, a company based in Stockley Park, which provides telecoms operators with billing systems. It launched Nextgen Billing, a completely modular application written in Corba, Java and XML, which it says will be a big help to companies rolling out the next generation of UMTS and GPRS services.
• Cambridge-based C3 exhibited its voice applications based on Windows NT, and launched Payonline, an automated self service payment systems designed to allow customers to pay over the phone using Switch and credit cards.
• Business Telecommunications Services showcased products based on AIX-5L, the high-volume enterprise Unix operating system created by SCO, Intel and IBM to run on IA-64.
• London-based FutureTV was showing off its Media Access Station, a set-top box which will create personalised TV systems by interfacing with services from cable TV operators as well as internet-based suppliers of music, video, games and email.
• Sentel Independent, from Northern Ireland, was at Brighton to launch Callmanager Online, a product which gives managers internet access to call logging statistics.