ATIS TechThink Kicks Off to Standing-Room Crowd

IPTV, IMS, Wireless Featured Prominently in First Day’s Sessions

March 20, 2006, TelecomNEXT, Las Vegas – IPTV, IMS and wireless technologies took center stage today during the first day of ATIS TechThink at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

A standing-room only crowd attended the Opening Summit, which featured top technology officers from the largest telecom carriers: Chris Rice, executive vice president of Network Planning and Engineering at AT&T; Bill Smith, chief technology officer (CTO) of BellSouth; Pieter Poll, CTO of Qwest; and Mark Wegleitner, senior vice president of Technology and CTO of Verizon. The four focused on their optical networks and the transition from legacy networks to IP-based networks during their opening remarks, including projections that AT&T will pass 18 million homes with fiber-to-the-premises by 2008.

IPTV was a major focus of the question-and-answer session. Rice characterized AT&T’s U-verse IPTV service’s content management and ease of use as its market differentiator. Wegleitner agreed, calling it presumptuous that Verizon would control every bit of video its customers see and recognizing the competition of video downloads from the Internet.

IPTV and IMS were the subjects in breakout conference sessions, as well, with speakers from vendors and carriers discussing the development of the new technologies and services and the transition from legacy systems. IPTV session presenters included Rice; Malachy Moynihan, vice president and general manager of the Home Networking Business Unit of Linksys; Bryan McGuirk, president of SES Americom; and Bill DeMuth, Vice President and CTO of SureWest Communications. In a concurrent session, Smith was joined on stage by Mohammed Shanableh, vice president of Network Technology Solutions at Sonus Networks; Ron De Lange, president and general manager of the Network Signaling Group at Tekelec; and Michel Burger, CTO of the Communications Sector at Microsoft.

Monday’s sessions also included a keynote presentation on Wireless Network Technologies by Linksys’ Moynihan that shared the consumer equipment manufacturer’s vision for the evolution and continued co-existence of wireless networks spanning from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi and cellular networks. He was followed by Mark Lowenstein, managing director of Mobile Ecosystems, who examined mobility and the convergence of wireline and wireless networks and services in a thirty-minute presentation. The Wireless conference track was rounded out by a WiMAX panel that included Smith, Dr. Hung Song, vice president of Samsung’s Global Marketing Group; and John Hoadley, vice president of the WiMAX Business Unit at Nortel Networks.

The industry corporate voices were joined on stage by industry analysts who also shared their perspectives. Danny Briere, CEO of Telechoice, and Deb Mielke, managing director, Treillage Network Strategies, shared the stage to discuss the New Breed of Communications Companies and asked tough questions about benchmarking and measuring success with new service deployments. Briere and Mielke also moderated the sessions on IPTV and IMS, respectively.

ATIS TechThink continues Tuesday with more sessions on IMS and IPTV, a series of “Convergence Challenge” presentations, including QoS and VoIP. The ATIS TechThink conference closes Wednesday with an IPTV session on Stage B of the TelecomNEXT Exhibit Hall, an RFID tutorial, and two Innovator Circle panel sessions.

For more information about ATIS TechThink, visit www.techthink.org.

About ATIS

ATIS is a technical planning and standards development organization that is committed to rapidly developing and promoting technical and operations standards for the communications and related information technologies industry worldwide using a pragmatic, flexible and open approach. Participants from more than 350 communications companies are active in ATIS’ 23 industry committees and Incubator Solutions Program. www.atis.org

###