Birmingham, AL – March 20, 2003 – The TeleMessaging Industry Association (TMIA) held its fifth Annual Meeting in New Orleans on March 3 and 4, 2003. While the meeting included standard business, such as committee reports and the election of new board members, an added flare came from the TMIA’s European partner, the International Association for Enhanced Voice Services (VMA).

TMIA’s relationship with the VMA has grown stronger over the last few years. “We are always eager to hear more about VMA’s activities, because Europe’s voice-service providers and vendors operate under different constraints, technological landscapes and service models,” said Val Beliak, Co-Chair, TMIA. “Similarly, TMIA has been gaining interest from multinational and foreign-based organizations over the last few years – the organizations’ close cooperation can only benefit our combined membership.”

Europe’s Providers Shift Focus from Unified Messaging to Specific Features
Representing VMA was Chairman Klaus Dieter Liedtke, as well as President Bertrand Gatellier, director Andreas Schaub and Manager Guntbert Markefka. The VMA presented an overview of the European market for enhanced voice services and an analysis of the unified messaging/unified communications experience in the European Market.

“European telecommunications providers have discovered that an overly feature-rich--or complex--offering could alienate subscribers,” said Liedtke. “So instead of marketing unified messaging or communications, providers are marketing individual features that address specific subscriber needs.”

Liedtke listed “pushing voice/fax messages to a corporate email account” as well as “listening to email messages on a mobile handset” as examples of features that could be individually marketed to consumers. He also described how European providers are offering self-provisioning capabilities, personalization capacity and user-notification services.

Also from Europe were TNC Network’s Bruno Beusch and Tina Cassani, who gave an interactive presentation about new media, entitled “Visions of Mobile Entertainment.” TNC Network specializes in applying emerging communication technologies to events, showrooms and conferences.

New Board Members Elected
The TMIA members elected the organization’s new board of directors for 2003. Valerie Beliak of Telus and Don Katz of Verizon will share the board’s chairmanship. Beth Bass of Sprint will be Treasurer. Directors will include: John Haspil, SBC Communications; Dan Corcoran, ServiceSpan; and, Thea McDowell, SchlumbergerSema. Bell Canada’s Joanne Giusto will serve as Secretary.

Readers seeking more information about the TMIA should visit http://www.tmia.org, or contact Tom Harper, Executive Director of TMIA, at tom@tmia.org.


About TMIA
The Messaging Industry Association, formed in 1998, is an open forum comprised of over 44companies including major service providers, prominent voicemail/messaging vendors, ASPs, customer premises equipment (CPE) providers and other parties. TMIA members share an interest in advancing the use of all messaging services in all markets, including SMS, UC, MMS and enhanced voicemail.

TMIA is actively recruiting members throughout the messaging industry. Those interested are encouraged to call 519-620-8668 or check the TMIA's web page at www.tmia.org.

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