Birmingham, AL – March 20, 2002 – The TeleMessaging Industry Association (TMIA) has elected its new Board of Directors and unveiled its latest research on Unified Communications (UC). The Association's annual meeting included over 70 industry-expert attendees representing more than 30 member companies, with guest companies that included BT, T-Mobil, ACS Alaska, CT Communications, InterVoice-Brite, Magically, Neubond and Zer Communications. Also present were TMIA's two newest member companies, IP Unity and Tornado.

New Board Members for 2002
New Board members elected at the TMIA Annual Meeting included: Co-chairs Don Katz from Verizon Communications and Valerie Beliak from Telus; Treasurer Beth Bass from Sprint; Secretary Courtney Spears from SBC Communications; and Directors Dan Corcoran from ServiceSPAN, Joanne Giusto from Bell Canada and Greg Vaudreuil from Lucent Technologies.

Directors Report: New Focus on Wireless
Jeff Schlueter of Cingular and Dave Tilford of Bell Canada, both of whom are leaving the TMIA board, reported on the goals, results and highlights of 2001 for the Association. The Association will continue to offer education, speaking opportunities, and a forum for representation at industry events and other venues for its membership. In addition, the Association will seek additional participation from wireless service providers and technology vendors who are seeing sharp increases in services and demand for voice-messaging.

UC Committee Research Highlights New Findings:
The TMIA UC Committee's research, presented by Chairman Dan Corcoran, was the result of queries to over a thousand US consumers. Among its findings, the survey uncovered the following new information:
- 50% of those surveyed are interested in sending voice messages to friends and family;
- 53% of those surveyed are more interested in dialing by speaking than by pushing buttons;
- 40% of those surveyed are interested in having combined home and mobile voice-mailboxes;
and 42% of users would prefer speaking to pushing buttons when retrieving information from their voice-mail systems.


About TMIA
The Telemessaging Industry Association, formed in 1998, is an open forum comprised of over 35 companies including major service providers, prominent voice mail/messaging vendors, ASP's, customer premise equipment providers and other parties with an interest in advancing the use of all messaging services in all markets. In 2002 the TMIA will be particularly focused on the education, introduction and acceptance of Unified Communications services.

Founding members include Bell Canada, BellSouth, Comverse, Glenayre, Lucent, SBC Communications, Telus and Unisys.

The TMIA is actively recruiting members throughout the messaging industry. Those interested are encouraged to call 864-962-0648 or check the TMIA's web page at www.tmia.org.


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