Microsoft's move

America's Network,  March, 2005  by Al Senia

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Microsoft is busy pitching its "software as a service" mantra to telecom carriers. The software giant rolled out at last month's 3GSM World Congress in Cannes an integrated software solution called Microsoft Connected Services that's designed to allow service providers to more quickly deploy converged communications services across multiple networks.

The idea is to create new service streams for the carriers, who are positioned to use Microsoft products to provide more services to the SMB market. Bell Canada, British Telecom and Celcom Malaysia have all bought into the idea. Celcom Malaysia plans to use it to offer new multimedia services and applications for mobile devices. But so far, American service providers are playing coy. According to sources at Microsoft, "very in-depth discussions" are occurring with at least two "well-known U.S.-based carriers."

COPYRIGHT 2005 Questex Media Group, Inc.
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