The Communications Management Association's annual
conference opens today (8 February), with a call for closer
co-operation between users, service providers and government to
ensure the UK communications infrastructure does not fall behind
international competitors.
CMA chief executive Glenn Powell said, "The conference is a
snapshot of the business, technology and regulatory issues facing
our members, who represent a broad cross-section of UK businesses
from both the public and private sectors."
The wide range of IT issues being discussed at the conference
reflects what the CMA sees as the rapidly changing role of the
telecoms manager. Simply managing an organisation's PBX is the
least of their problems, the CMA said.
Issues on the agenda include appropriate outsourcing versus genuine
in-sourcing, regulation, business continuity, single supplier
partnerships and broadband.
Technical issues being discussed include IT integration, the
capitalisation of technology, peer-to-peer networks, voice over IP,
radio frequency identification, transforming legacy systems and
grid computing.
CMA leaders hope to bring together suppliers and users at the event
but some differences of opinion on how the UK can remain a world
leader in business communications technology are expected to
emerge.
New CMA chairman Phil Sayer will jointly chair the conference. He
said, "The government may be impressed with over one million
broadband users with 512kbps access, but this has come about three
years too late - other countries are leaving us behind.
"In countries such as Japan and South Korea, users can enjoy 5mbps
to 10mbps access for less than $25 a month, so we still have a long
way to go."