MoU success stories : interoperability in telecommunications within a competitive, multiprovider, multicultural environment

摘要

Early elaboration and adoption of standards is an important prerequisite for interoperability of telecommunication networks, services and applications. Recognised worldwide and regional standardisation organisations, as well as a fast growing number of fora, are working towards this objective. But even more important are the mechanisms, by which the users--that means those, who might be the customers of standardised products--become convinced and decide to invest in those products, which allow seamless interconnection of networks, proper interworking of services and terminals and interoperability of applications. In Europe, where in parallel with the ongoing liberalisation of the telecommunications market, traditional regulatory instruments like public type approval requirements have become outdated, public network operators have developed a successful instrument for the coordinated introduction of networks and services f the so-called memoranda of understanding (MoUs). Most prominent examples for such MoUs are the memorandum of understanding on the development and coordinated implementation of a second generation mobile communication system--today well-known under the shortname GSM-MoU--and the memorandum of understanding for the coordinated introduction of ISDN. The main advantages and results of those MoUs are outlined in this paper. Based on these positive experiences--and of course taking into account the changing regulatory environment in the European Union and its member states, as well as the globalisation and convergence of the telecommunication and information processing market--telecommunications operators in ETNO (European Telecommunications Public Network Operators' Association) have now started the drafting of a new memorandum of understanding on an interoperability platform for broadband telecommunications services, based on asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)-technology (ATM-MoU), which is envisaged to be open for signature by any organisation lawfully able to provide public telecommunications networks and/or services from early 1998.