TM Forum Increases Focus on Asia as Service Providers Look to Streamline Costs in 2009

(Business News & Technology News, 13 Jan 2009)

TM Forum is expanding operations in Asia in response to growing interest from regional service providers seeking to reduce costs and improve operational processes in the face of tougher economic pressure.

TM Forum's Management World Asia, which is being held this week in Singapore, is TM Forum's first new initiative in the region for 2009. This pan-Asian event will address the need for service providers across the region to reduce the costs associated with the management and roll-out of communications services as they face increasing economic pressure.

Following a number of successful regional events in India, China, Japan and Kuala Lumpur, Management World Asia will give attendees the opportunity to explore how Service Providers across the region and around the world have utilized TM Forum best practices and standards to transform business and network operations in response to growing competition, convergence of services and the extending communications value chain.

Keynote speakers at the conference include:
- Dr. Shyue-Ching Lu, Chairman & CEO, Chunghwa Telecom ¨C who will discuss how the last three years have seen CHT transform its strategy and tactics to face the challenges from CSP and other non CSP competition and grow its revenue while keeping its promise of "Quality and Commitment to Customers";

- Paul Berriman, Chief Technology Officer, PCCW¨C who will talk about declining revenue growth from commoditized and competitive basic access services such as broadband is not sustainable and how telecoms operators must transform themselves in order to generate new revenue sources such as those from content, applications and transactions;

- Sigve Brekke, Executive Vice President and Head of Region Asia, Telenor ASA ¨C who will present the key milestones in Telenor journey to successfully transform itself into a global mobile player today with more than 155 million subscribers worldwide;

- Sumit Chowdhury, CIO, Reliance Communications Ltd ¨C who will explain the steps that Reliance has taken to transform their business and networks in the face of the changing market dynamics in India;

- Chen Gang, GM IT Planning and Development (Shanxi), China Mobile Communications Corp. ¨C who will cover the steps that China Mobile have taken to transform their business and networks in the face of the dual challenges of rapid subscriber growth but increasing subscriber sophistication and choice.

TM Forum plans to follow Management World Asia with a series of online and regional events throughout 2009 that will continue to address the need for business transformation and process improvement. Following the success of the "One Stop FMC Services Catalyst"—a TM Forum rapid development project which involved members including Amdocs, Chunghwa Telecom, Microsoft, NSN Taiwan, Tata Consultancy and TELUS, and won the Forum's 2008 Best Catalyst Award, TM Forum plans to initiate further Asia-centric rapid-development projects this year.

"While recent studies have indicated that telecommunications revenues in Asia will have eclipsed those in the North America for the first time in 2008, there is no doubt that Service Providers around the world, including Asia, face a challenging year and an accelerating need to streamline processes and reduce operational expenditure. Meanwhile, the extended value chain of content, digital commerce and advertising continues to offer a significant opportunity for growth, as long as Service Providers can create and deliver new services more quickly," says Martin Creaner, President and CTO, TM Forum.

The two-day conference will feature perspectives from more than 15 communications service providers, including a number of case studies looking at the benefits of TM Forum's widely adopted set of best practices, frameworks and software standards.

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