BT has joined the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum, and will participate in the group’s specification and standardization activities. By joining the consortium, BT unites with peers like France Telecom (News - Alert)/Orange and Telecom Italia. The addition augments the Forum’s already strong focus on delivery of high-value applications and services on Linux-based handsets.

 

“LiPS welcomes BT and anticipates valuable contributions to our working group activities,” said Haila Wang, president of the LiPS Forum in a statement.

 

Wang said that their standardization efforts will benefit from BT’s global carrier experience across dozens of markets and from BT’s expertise as an operator serving hundreds of millions of users.

 

Matt Bross, BT Group (News - Alert) chief technology officer said that their company strives to deliver innovation at the speed of their customers’ lives. He emphasized that to do this they must look beyond the boundaries of the organization to fuse internal and external innovation, and believes the LiPS Forum is a key enabler of this open innovation.

 

The new membership will provide BT with opportunities to lower deployment and management costs through standardization. This will enable the global operator to maintain margins with faster, cost-effective services deployment and attractive customer value propositions, and to support innovative services with interoperable Linux-based devices.

 

Founded in November, 2005, the Linux Phone Standards Forum is a consortium of leading industry players formed to standardize the Linux-based services and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that most directly influence the development, deployment and interoperability of applications and user-level services.

 

BT made news last week after predicting major changes for the industry over the next year. According to a BT futurologist, the days of call center automation are over and there will be a surge in the rise of homeshored contact center advisors for 2008.