Wholesale Applications Community gets 9 new members

The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), an alliance of telecommunications companies committed to building an open applications platform, has announced an additional nine new members to the organisation, including two significant new OEMs as well as companies from the mobile community, bringing the total membership to 57. New members to the organisation include Aepona, Camber Tech Inc (BVI) Limited, GClue, Gemalto, Infraware, KT Innotz, Sharp and Sony Ericsson as Associate members while the Russian operator VimpelCom has joined as an Operator Member. Additionally, the GSMA's OneAPI has also been confirmed as the standard to be used by WAC operators for the exposure of network APIs.

The GSMA OneAPI is a commonly supported set of lightweight and Web-friendly APIs to allow mobile and other network operators to expose useful network information and capabilities to Web application developers. It is designed to reduce the effort and time needed to create applications and content that are portable across mobile operators and is critical in enabling WAC developers to quickly and effectively develop web-based applications that span platforms, devices and operators.

Launched in February 2010, the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) is an open global alliance formed from leading organisations within the telecoms sector. Uniting a fragmented applications marketplace, WAC will create an open industry platform that benefits the entire ecosystem, including applications developers, handset manufacturers, OS owners, network operators and end users.

The Wholesale Applications Community will:
+ Accelerate and expand the market for applications – Simplify application development by giving developers the opportunity to write applications that can be deployed across multiple platforms and multiple operators, and address a potential global market of more than 3 billion users.
+ Create more compelling applications – Enable developers to utilise both device and network capabilities to create the next generation of applications.
+ Provide greater choice for users – Enable portability of applications across devices, operating systems and network operators.

Current WAC members are as follows:
Accenture, Aepona, Alcatel-Lucent, Aplix, America Movil, ASPire, AT&T, Bell Mobility, Borqs, Bougyues Telecom, Camber Tech Inc (BVI) Limited, Capgemini, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, France Telecom, Fujitsu, GClue, Gemalto, Huawei, Hutchison 3 Group, Infraware, Innoace, Intel, KDDI, KT Corporation, KT Innotz, LG Electronics, LG Uplus, LiMo Foundation, MTS, Myriad Group, NTT DOCOMO, Oberthur Technologies, Obigo, Opera Software, Orascom Telecom, Oracle Corporation, Qualcomm Incorporated, Rogers Communications, Samsung, SFR, Sharp, SK Telecom, Smart Communications, SOFTBANK MOBILE, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telekom Austria Group, Telenor, Verizon, Vimpelcom, Vodafone, ZTE and the GSMA.

For a list of members and more information, please go to www.wholesaleappcommunity.com.