The dotMobi Advisory Group (MAG) and the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) have today signed an Industry Alliance Memorandum of Agreement supporting each organisation’s initiatives.

The MAG – a dotMobi-accredited, independent non-profit global industry forum – and the CWTA – who are the authority on wireless issues, developments and trends in Canada – have agreed to promote the development of mobile Internet services through .mobi domains as well as through a common set of industry best practices surrounding mobile browsing, content, email, commerce and advertising.

The .mobi domain is the first and only ICANN-appointed top-level domain designed exclusively for identifying mobile content for use on mobile phones. Currently more than 575,000 .mobi domains have been registered since the domain’s launch in September 2006. When a site has a .mobi address – like businessweek.mobi, fordca.mobi, hilton.mobi, google.mobi or live.mobi – on-the-go consumers can assume the site will work on their mobile phones.

With more than half of all Canadians owning a mobile phone, ensuring that they can connect to the content they want, wherever and whenever they want it, is paramount. And the freedom to use all capabilities of a mobile phone is important to our members. The .mobi domain is a trust-mark that indicates content will work on practically any mobile phone with data capabilities. That’s why the CWTA is excited to work with the dotMobi Advisory Group, said Peter Barnes, who is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association.

Thanks to the leadership efforts at the CWTA, the Canadian market is one of the Top 10 countries globally in registering and developing sites for .mobi domains, said Michael J. O’Farrell, the Chair and Executive Director of the dotMobi Advisory Group. The MAG-CWTA Industry Alliance provides dotMobi and our dotMobi Advisory Group members with valuable Canadian market input for our mobile Internet task force initiatives, regional policy considerations and access to key information on Canadian mobile Internet adoption trends. We look forward to working with the CWTA to foster continued growth for the mobile Internet economy in the Canadian market.

The MAG-CWTA Industry Alliance employs reciprocal programs for each organisation’s management for cross-committee participation, ongoing event support and global networking to advance mobile Internet commercialisation efforts targeted at serving the interests of the worldwide mobile industry and it’s consumers.