COMPLETE ARTICLE

 
MWIF UNVEILS STRATEGIC PLAN FOR 2002

General economic and key industry developments are significantly impacting the mobile Internet community. For instance, the Internet and telecommunications industries are facing economic challenges. Furthermore, recent events continue to impact corporate travel and, in general, companies are reducing and consolidating expenses wherever possible and focusing on core business initiatives. However, in the midst of this environment, development of mobile Internet services continues.

With this in mind the following general principles will guide MWIF's efforts in 2002:

1. More emphasis on market development and education;
2. Maximize value from MWIF's technical work;
3. Increase operating efficiencies.
    

MORE DETAILS ON GENERAL PRINCIPLES AND KEY OBJECTIVES

1. More emphasis will be placed on market development and education. Activities in this area will target specific strategic goals and the MWIF Board of Directors (BOD) will take an active role in creating and executing these strategies. The activities of the Marketing Committee also will be expanded.

2. Maximize value from MWIF's past and ongoing technical work.

3. Increase operating efficiencies. This will be accomplished by reducing members' cost of participation, maximizing the use of virtual meeting technologies, such as teleconference calling (e.g., the January TC meeting will be held via conference call). However, face-to-face technical meetings may be scheduled if needed.

Specifically, the BOD has outlined the following activities for each of the key objectives.
 

OBJECTIVE: Bring the core network standards of 3GPP and 3GPP2 closer together.

We will continue our core network initiative by finalizing a Gap analysis document, creating a set of harmonization operation and business requirements from MWIF's gap analysis, and utilizing these requirements to formally and informally influence standardization.

With regards to influencing standardization, our initial activities will include: providing our operation and business requirements for OHG's harmonization meeting in 1Q02; having the BOD work behind the scenes to proactively garner support for the requirements; and developing realistic incremental steps to meet harmonization requirements. 

Working Groups 6 & 7 will lead this initiative.
 

OBJECTIVE: Create greater understanding of the need for and value of a single open mobile Internet architecture.

OBJECTIVE: Increase mobile operators' understanding of the value and benefits of Internet-based solutions.

These two objectives have common supporting activities. These activities include: writing a business value white paper (WG-8), continuing the proof of concept and validation efforts (WG-9), and maintaining a set of Educational and Promotional programs driven by the Market Development and Education group (MDE).

Specifically, the educational activities include the quarterly newsletter, Webtorials/Webcasting, and creating educational tools for members (e.g., brochures). The promotional activities include participating in tradeshows and continuing our PR campaign and potential advertising.

OBJECTIVE: Increase the involvement of Internet companies.

The supporting activities for this objective include conducting a BOD led membership campaign and inviting Internet companies to speak at TC virtual meetings.

OBJECTIVE: Help create a plug and play environment within the RAN and between the RAN and the core.

The supporting activities for this objective include continuing the efforts to develop MTR-007 v2 (WG-4), Defining RNRA (WG-4) and Define Open Interfaces (WG-4).
 

In support of these five key objectives, the BOD believes it is important to continue developments with regards to Operator Requirements. WG1 will continue to refine, maintain and ensure compliance with operator requirements in support of all five strategic goals.

The supporting activities include inviting and incorporating new requirements and continuing reviews of 3GPP and 3GPP2 requirements to increase harmonization.

The operators on the BOD have developed and are committed to achieving these goals to realize the MWIF mission for the benefit of the mobile Internet community.

We appreciate past efforts and achievements and look forward to the continuing participation of the membership in achieving our vision.

The Powerpoint presentation given at the MWIF Technical Committee meeting is posted on the MWIF website at mwif.org.