Over 300 delegates attended Communications Week International’s conference on Asynchronous Transfer Mode in Paris last month, an event billed as Europe’s first major conference dedicated to the issues surrounding the technology’s development and deployment in private and public networks. David Cleevely of Analysys Ltd was positive about the technology’s future, saying that it will save costs and deliver benefits – but these factors will not be distributed evenly between players in the telecommunications sector. Indeed, he believes that phone companies will be forced into implementing Asynchronous Transfer Mode in order to head off incursions by large users and resellers, but also that the crucial factor in successful implementation will be the strategic partnerships they can establish with hardware and software vendors who will ultimately benefit most from Asynchronous Transfer Mode. But for Martin White of Intelidata Ltd, the crunch factor will be that of tariffs. Tariff harmonisation in Europe still has a long way to go, he said, despite the best efforts of the European Commission. He reckons successful commercial launch of broadband services could be hampered by a complex and rigid tariff framework, and stressed the importance of discussing tariff issues, including quality of service factors, in open forum, with a broad spread of users represented.