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Microsoft Builds Telecoms Alliances

Posted on: Monday, 11 July 2005, 06:00 CDT

LAST week's alliance between Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer and France Telecom chairman and chief executive Didier Lombard will result in new products ranging from handheld internet devices to a new version of Minitel, a French service similar to teletext.

Something called the Microsoft Connected Services Framework will provide the computer software glue needed to dovetail and manage the new product range.

Early offerings will include a mobile phone developed by France Telecom that will connect to the internet in wireless hotspots to enable website and e-mail access. The mobile phone's US roots will be advertised with what is a highly Anglicised name for a French product - LivePhone.

Another innovation for France Telecom will be Homezone, a service that uses a special mobile phone that enables the user to make wireless calls over the internet when at home. It would then use the ordinary cellular network when outside.

According to France Telecom's Lombard, the partnership could also result in a 21st-century version of Minitel. Unknown outside France, Minitel was a precursor of the internet, a kind of smart teletext, that was designed in the 1970s and used a small screen attached to telephones.

It became so popular with the French, who found it fast and convenient, that many people initially preferred it to the internet.

Lombard is reported to have said "we might have something like that [a modern version of teletext]," but it would not be called Minitel.

According to industry sources, a fast, easy-to-access and simplified form of an information search service such as Minitel could answer the telecoms industry's problem of how to produce a form of internet that would be fast and simple enough for mobile phone users to want.

According to Ballmer, partnerships such as the one with France Telecom and the deal with BT to provide internet TV services mark a sea change for the IT industry in general and Microsoft in particular.

In the past, Microsoft's big partners were IT companies such as computer chip manufacturing giant Intel.

But as telecoms companies start to move all their services on to the internet, Microsoft will aim to forge an increasing number of partnerships with big telecoms operators such as France Telecom and BT.

Earlier this year, the Seattle software giant revealed to The Business that its strategy is to have Microsoft software running through roughly 75% of the telephone lines in Europe.

Source: Sunday Business; London (UK)

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