MORRISTOWN, NJ—March 19, 2009— TM Forum, the world's premier industry group focused on business effectiveness for the communications and media sectors, today announced more than a dozen leading executives from the Cable industry have now been confirmed to speak at the organization’s flagship conference, Management World 2009 (May 4-8, Nice, France). Mehrdad Mansourpour, Managing Director and CIO, UPC Broadband, will present a keynote address focused on UPC’s transformation program to enable new services and business models, as part of the Business Transformation summit at the international conference.

More than a dozen executives from the cable industry representing MSOs in Europe, North and South America and Australia will deliver presentations across five conference summits, including Chuck Harvey, VP of ITS Business Operations for Rogers Communications; Michael Lawrey, Executive Director of Operations for Telstra; Bryn Jones, Director of Mobile Delivery for Virgin Media; Frank Bauer, Manager of Business Services Assurance for Cablecom; and Rodrigo Duclos, CTO, Net Servicos de Comunicacao S.A.

As Cable companies and MSOs are forced to compete in an increasingly complex market with IPTV, satellite, VOIP and online video providers, many operators are turning to TM Forum to lead the way in adapting their businesses to support new services.  “Cable operators are facing a unique set of operational transformation issues, as they seek viable business models that will help them compete in the crowded content market,” said Jim Warner, Head of Content, Digital Media and Advertising, TM Forum. “Many providers are turning to TM Forum as they realize that, ultimately, these new business models all have a key component related to driving down operational costs and driving up customer satisfaction.”

Management World 2009 will explore the key issues facing the cable industry, as well as broader concerns affecting the entire communications industry in the current economic climate. With a theme of ‘Strategies and Tactics for Tough Times’, the Forum has developed five expert-led conference summits to focus on topics including business and technology transformation, charging and revenue management, digital commerce and advertising, and customer experience. The conference will also feature exclusive live demonstrations in TM Forum’s Innovation Zone – ‘Forumville’ – where programs such as Content Encounter will offer real-world examples of how players in the expanding content value chain can work together to deliver new services and revenue streams.

For more than 20 years, TM Forum has provided the environment for communications service providers to collaborate and develop best practices and industry standards. Today these include a set of proven and flexible Solution Frameworks (NGOSS) including the Information Framework (SID), Business Process Framework (eTOM), and a number of TM Forum standards-based software interfaces widely deployed by the cable industry.   Presentations at Management World will supply both the business case and practical implementation guidance for using these standards in the cable industry.

The Forum is also the home of the popular Internet Protocol Details Record (IPDR) technology that enables collection of metrics on user behavior, and simplifies integration of third-party applications.  IPDR, which will be another focus at Management World, is widely deployed across MSOs in North America and is embedded in Cablelabs®True2way™ protocol. 

IPDR is a prime example of the kind of technology standards that can fill the technology gap and deliver critical information to cable providers, with applications for capacity management, traffic analysis, user trending, revenue assurance, billing, digital advertising, and other use cases that are currently under exploration in TM Forum’s Cable Interest Group.  In addition to maintaining the IPDR technology standard, the Forum hosts an IPDR Users Group which collaborates on implementation specific challenges. 

For more information on the TM Forum’s Cable Initiative and Management World 2009, including a full conference agenda, keynote and speaker profiles, as well as information surrounding certified training courses available in Nice, please visit http://www.tmforum.org/ManagementWorld2009/. 

Press and analysts interested in attending Management World 2009 and connecting with speakers for the conference should contact Geoff Devlin, [email protected], to apply for press access to the conference and arrange meetings.