The big firms in telecom will gather together in Nice

Between July 8th and 15th, about one hundred firms of telecom will take part to the gathering around the new products and services in telephony and multimedia conferences.

From July 8th to 15th, all the big firms in telecom will be put together in Nice Acropolis, around the new products or services in telephony or in multimedia conferences. For Karl Heinz Rosenbrock, the ETSI general manager, 'the summit contributes to develop the global recognition of Nice-Sophia Antipolis as a technological pole'.The gathering is co-organized by the ETSI (the European Institute of Normalization in Telecom), settled in Sophia Antipolis, with Microsoft, Intel, IMTC, and Tenovis, as well as with the support of France Telecom. About one hundred firms, from the whole world, will take part to the summit. Each firm works in telecom. There, they will be able to test the validity of the standards as well as the compatibility of their future products or services in telephony or multimedia conferences, before they are launched on the market.Among the tested standards, there will be the H 323 standard as well as the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) that are particularly meant to be for the voice transmission on the Web. The ETSI is all the more involved in the event because the TIPHON project (Telecommunications and Internet Protocol Harmonization over Networks) deals with the interconnectivity between the IP network (Internet Protocol) and the usual phone network. Thus, the Acropolis is going to turn into a gigantic cable network.The ETSI is already well-known in the telecom circles because it is at the root of several standards used in the whole world. The most famous standard is the GMS used by the mobiles. The GSM has got over 600 million users in the world and it is constantly developing; indeed, every 4 seconds, there is a new user. The ETSI is currently working on the standard of third generation (UMTS) that will enable people to be connected to Internet and to transmit videos from their mobile phones.But the ETSI is also working on other standards, such as the DECT for the wireless fixed telephony, the DVB standard that particularly allows people to be connected to Internet from their TV, and several other standards that are used in all the European countries as well as in the whole world.