Mobile content delivery to witness change in competitive market environment

The summit will be held from May 29 - June 1, 2005 and will take place at the JW Marriot Hotel, sponsored by Etisalat, Mobile Telecommunication Group, Motorola TeraData and Al Tamimi and is supported by Mobile Entertainment Forum and Mobile2win.

Sabine Enthammer, Executive Director, IIR Middle East said, "This edition of the event will highlight several new business models for the mobile industry and focus on various issues and challenges that the Middle East telecom sector is facing. The region will benefit tremendously from the insights provided by leading players from the telecommunications sector from around the world who will be a part of CONNECT 2005."

Claudia Poepperl, Director Marketing, Qpass, and Board Member, Mobile Entertainment Forum, one of the speakers at the upcoming summit, who will focus on the change in content delivery stated, "Today, as the technical aspects of content delivery have started to become a commodity, it is essential to focus on the elaborate offerings to the end user".

During the summit, Qpass will discuss topics like cross media selling capabilities and recommendation models to promote more services and generate more revenue; choosing the right models to sell entertainment content; ability to offer flexible payment and packaging models; revenue assurance for mobile entertainment content and making mobile music work.

"Our main reason for participating in CONNECT 2005 is to share Qpass' mobile commerce success story in the Americas and Europe with key players in the fast growing Middle East markets." added Poepperl.

The four-day summit will feature case studies and presentations from various regional and international operators. Among the key topics to be discussed will be; strategies for operator growth, competition regulation, management of mobile content while maximising content revenue, development of new creative business models, targeting of enterprise customers, the role of IP, making 3G a high-volume market, extending the success of SMS and optimising prepaid customer spending.

Samer Al Kharrat, Regional manager, Cisco Systems Middle East, is another speaker who stresses the need for revenue generation, while providing advanced customer service. "Developing new service revenues and ensuring customer care improvement are the key challenges in the Middle East telecoms sector and CONNECT 2005 will serve as a good platform to address these issues. We are participating in this event to meet our customers and to highlight Cisco's leadership in technology," said Al Kharrat.

"CONNECT 2005 will provide high level networking possibilities with some of the biggest names in the telecommunications sector. The summit will provide an opportunity for participants to examine various value added services for customers, while finding innovative ways to generate revenues," concluded Enthammer.

In addition to the main sessions at the summit, there will be specially designed forums on key topics. Three post-summit workshops will take place on May 31 and June 1 focussing on: Developing Content Services; Maximising Opportunities in De-regulated Telecoms Markets; and Interconnection.