ASIA : Hutchison CAT Wireless MultiMedia Limited, the marketing service provider of the latest CDMA2000 1X technology in Thailand under the brand of "Hutch", today inaugurates the launch of its M-sites program, an industry first full-fledged local developers' program designed to create and develop local developers' community with viable and enduring business model supported by the opening up of Hutch multi-media contents portal for certified contents.

Mr. Stephen Sun, President & CEO of Hutchison CAT Wireless MultiMedia Ltd, said, "In addition to our business objective to enhance our contents offerings to our customers, the Hutch M-sites program is also one of our initiatives to undertake our social responsibility to develop local talents with not only tailor made developers' programs, but also viable business model for them in a long run,"

"The Hutch M-sites program is meant to encourage local talents from young and enthusiastic university students to established corporations to realize their contents development plan with viable business model riding on the rapid developing wireless multi-media industry in Thailand" Mr. Sun concluded.

Participants who join the program are actively encouraged to develop mobile applications and contents guided by a comprehensive program that includes an interactive developers' website, training programs, Hutch M-sites technical lab, extensive test facilities with full technical support from Hutch. The developers' website will contain news and updates, downloadable tools, technical support, test feedback as well as information on local and global marketing developments. All developers will also be exposed to the latest wireless multi-media technologies both from Hutch and overseas technology companies or operators.

Lieutenant General Anusorn Teptada, Chairman of CAT Telecom Public Company Limited said "CAT Telecom plc. and Hutch have collaborated to introduce the Hutch M-sites program to Thais since it is a key milestone of Thailand's human resources development in IT and telecom industry. In light of the government's policy to leverage Thais' abilities and skills to be able to design our own technology as well as to encourage Thai people to embrace technology in a wider scale, therefore today we introduce to you Hutch M-sites program. We hope that from now on every single Thai will be enabled equivalently to receive and use technology which nowadays it increasingly plays a significant role in our community. Another objective of the program is to develop the ability of the local people to be able to compete with the global market in terms of exporting the contents, applications, and IT products."

"We encourage developers to provide contents and applications based on the JAVA, BREW, WAP 2.0, and IVR platforms. The program embraces a variety of contents from infotainment such as news, banking, sports and business updates as well as downloadable contents and applications including games, VDO, ring tones, wallpaper and much more." said Stephen Sun, President & CEO of Hutchison CAT Wireless MultiMedia Limited.

"Hutch developers and content partners will benefit from both local marketing and the opportunity for international exposure through the Hutchison group and the Global BREW Developers' Community. We believe this is a great opportunity for talented local developers to really market their products," said Senior Vice President, Piroon Paireepairit.

Hutch M-Sites classifies partners and contents into six different types:

1. Digital Accessory Partners to develop contents such as ring tones, screen savers, wallpaper, and karaoke.

2. Information Service Partners to provide WAP services such as sports, music, lifestyle and world news;

3. Business Service Partners to provide WAP services e.g. banking, brokering, mobile payment, as well as other corporate services.

4. Downloadable Application Partners to provide BREW and JAVA applications, including games, fun & entertainment applications, infotainment applications, as well as other business applications

5. IVR Service Partners to provide voice content based services such as Song4U, Starbless, HutchSay and Audio News;

6. VDO Service Partners to provide VDO streaming and download for a comprehensive range of VDO services.