SAN FRANCISCO and FREMONT, Calif. -- The ATM Forum and MPLS Forum jointly announced today the successful formation of a joint ATM Forum / MPLS Forum effort on ATM/MPLS interworking -- a collaborative alliance designed to address issues surrounding the interworking of broadband technologies; in particular ATM and MPLS. The goal of the effort: to meet the needs of the industry of having one standard by ultimately establishing identical text published by both organizations. As one of the first such collaborative efforts among two leading industry organizations, the joint endeavor aims to meet on a monthly basis in order to discuss the needs and challenges facing carriers today: in particular, the need for strong, reliable broadband technology. "Both The ATM Forum and The MPLS Forum have been working together over the past four months with the specific goal of establishing a formal mechanism of direct collaboration," explained Jim Harford, Chairman of The ATM Forum's ATM & IP Collaboration (AIC) workgroup. "Each organization brings some of the technical expertise necessary to resolve integration issues surrounding next generation broadband networks. We both strongly believe that it is not a matter of choosing one technology over another and that both ATM and MPLS are, and will continue to be, critical components of the successful evolving broadband architecture. Nevertheless, a clear integration path to next generation networks is critical to the telecom service providers. The carriers need us to work with each other, not against each other. So, we formed this ATM Forum/MPLS Forum collaborative effort."ATM ForumMPLS Forum