At the 3GSM Congress in Barcelona, Jan Wäreby, senior vice president at Ericsson, Rikko Sakaguchi, senior vice president at Sony Ericsson, Rob Lewis, CEO of Omnifone, and Markus Berger-de Leon, managing director of Jamba, engaged in an expert panel discussion: Exclusivity versus Ubiquity: What Consumers Want.

The panelists all agreed that rapidly rising consumer demand for mobile music and entertainment had brought their industries' commercial interests together.

Earlier efforts in 2000 and 2001 were too early for a number of reasons including a lack of handset support and network bottlenecks. Since then, handset manufacturers, network equipment vendors and operators have worked with the media and entertainment industries to resolve these issues and others including protection of artists' rights.

The market potential is huge, but it cannot be realized without such cooperation. Open standards are critical, though implementations will differ. These points were agreed by the expert panelists, who criticized pursuit of proprietary, vertical solutions.

Wäreby said: "Standards, a historical strength of the GSMA (GSM Association), are necessary to assure consumers enjoy a positive experience that will drive the success of our efforts."

Consumers will pay for "digital rights," but they do not want to lose these rights if someone steals their phone or they upgrade or switch digital devices; nor do they want to lose their content catalogs or abandon their digital rights because they switch carriers, one panel discussion concluded.

Ease of use, more compelling services, fast access to any service, anytime, anywhere are expectations that consumers anticipate.

Wäreby said: "The consumer is king. Operators are particularly well positioned to serve those needs - and supporting these operators is our job."