Several companies in the mobile communication business have announced their intention to combine forces and establish universal standards for mobile phone technologies and services. They hope that this will make it easier for consumers to use their mobile phones and encourage them to take up premium services due to enhanced levels of interoperability within the market.

The collaboration between Nokia, Sony, Ericsson, Toshiba and other major players in the industry was announced at the COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas. Both Nokia and Sony stressed that the outcome of this co-operation will be open, and aim to make the results of their co-operation available to third parties in the future.

The collaboration will cover technical areas such as new user interfaces, content downloading, multimedia messaging, open digital rights management, and compatibility on implementing IPv6 the "Internet Protocol Version 6". IPv6 is the "next generation" protocol designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force.

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