In a joint press release issued last week, the companies said they had agreed to offer a range of unified communications services.

“FNA represents the first services joint venture between global telecommunications carriers which is truly multilateral in nature and focused on the specific needs of the global financial community,” said Mr David Bland, general manager of FNA.

Members of the alliance include Singapore Telecom, AOTC of Australia, RTT-Belgacom of Belgium, Telefonica of Spain, Mercury Communications of Britain, France Telecom, Stentor of Canada, Italcable of Italy, German Telecom, KDD of Japan and MCI of the United States.

The organisation is still in the throes of formation and meetings are being held in France this week which should help determine the specific services it will offer.

“The FNA is only a co-operative company which will offer services to specific industries,” said Mr Andrew Wong Kar-lun, product manager, international private leased services with Hongkong Telecom.

“Right now all the FNA’s member companies offer a large number of services to customers in general. But these are all standard services,” he said.

“The FNA will be aiming at providing guaranteed and premium services which customers will be able to subscribe to in addition to those currently available.”

One service of importance to its customers will be the one-stop shop telecommunications concept it would offer, Mr Wong said.

Before the FNA was set up, only bilateral agreements existed between the 12 member countries for taking orders and billing, for example. But with the formation of the association, any single nominated country can represent the others.

“The customer will need to contact only one party for billing,” Mr Wong said.

Each member company will have an equal ownership in FNA and equal representation on its board of directors.

The FNA will be incorporated in Brussels at the end of the month, the statement said, adding that membership could be enlarged to include other companies over time and would not be restricted to the founding countries.

The FNA’s first chairman will be Mr Allan Badrick of AOTC Australia, while two vice-chairmen will come from RTT-Belgacom and MCI. Other member companies will take their turn later.

“Other office bearers have been nominated but nothing has been finalised yet,” Mr Badrick said in a telephone interview from Sydney.

“The company was set up in Brussels because of the flexibility of Belgian law with regard to ownership and corporate matters,” he said. The joint ownership of the FNA could have posed problems if the firms had been set up elsewhere.

Representing Hongkong on the FNA will be Hongkong Telecom director John Bolton who is in France this week for the talks on what services the organisation will provide.

The FNA is expected to offer members a full range of private, shared financial community and public services. These will cover both the industry’s existing and future communications requirements.

Details would be made public late this year, Mr Wong said.

Mr Wong said the FNA dated back at least nine months and the idea for the joint effort was put forward by MCI.

“We identified that the financial sector needs better communications service than other sectors, so we are trying to form an organisation that focuses on the financial sector in terms of offering quality service,” he said.

There were subtle differences between the services already available to the financial industry and those that the FNA would offer, Mr Badrick said.

“The banking industry was being deregulated almost at the same time as the telecom industry,” he said.

“Under older regulations, a private network could not be set up for companies that did not have a direct connection with each other. But now the FNA will be able to set up networks among banks, for example.”

Among the details that have to be worked out by the FNA are whether it will set up an infrastructure of its own or use the networks already set-up and in use by its members.