The ng Connect Program founded by Alcatel-Lucent has been experiencing a strong growth as industry interest in next generation networks and services continues to grow at a rapid pace. Launched in February 2009, the ng Connect Program announced that four new members have joined including leading companies from the music, telecommunication and education sectors. This brings the total number of companies in the program to eighteen since its inception two months ago.

 

The ng Connect Program is a multi-industry initiative dedicated to establishing a rich and diverse ecosystem of infrastructure, devices, content and applications for both mobile and fixed broadband networks including 4G, Long Term Evolution (LTE), GPON and other ultra high bandwidth technologies.

 

Upon hearing the news TMC President and Group Editor-in-Chief, Rich Tehrani blogged about the report saying, “…if you are smart, you will watch this group closely and get involved at the appropriate time. It should be obvious that the next-generation of devices, services and media can generate much more revenue. As consumers look to have their media delivered on a variety of devices, we have seen they will pay more for the privilege.”

 

The new members include:

 

 

"We are really pleased with the tremendous industry interest in the ng Connect Program generated in just a few short months since our launch," said Derek Kuhn, vice president of Emerging Technology and Media, Alcatel-Lucent. "The ng Connect program is making great progress signing up new members who are actively working together to build an open ecosystem that we know can bring whole new classes of services to market; services that can leverage the growing capabilities of service-aware IP networks, IMS and more."

 

The ng Connect Program will hold demonstrations of end-to-end next generation broadband applications at the CTIA Wireless 2009 trade show and exhibition in the Alcatel-Lucent Booth (#6714). Demos will include a new dynamic digital signage demonstration and an e-Learning experience showing a two-way audio visual exchange between student and teacher.

 

By helping bring new applications and services to market more quickly, the ng Connect Program hopes to facilitate an expansion of the revenue base for service providers and provide new opportunities for others in the value chain. To accomplish this, the ng Connect Program is developing a variety of pre-integrated solutions featuring the latest innovations in network, device and software technologies, officials said in a statement.