The Mobile Data Initiative (MDI) is an industry alliance formed by some of the world's leading mobile telecommunications and information technology companies. It aims to drive mobile data adoption forward through infrastructure improvement, ease of use and standards compatibility.

The Mobile Data Initiative's ultimate goal is to make wireless data transmissions with a mobile PC and cellular phone as seamless and as common as making a simple phone call.

With this in mind, MDI sponsors regularly scheduled interoperability workshops. They invite manufacturers from all facets of the international wireless communications community, to meet and test product compatibility prior to introduction. In these Intel workshops, participants are given the opportunity to run "end to end" analyses of software, firmware and hardware in a closed loop system – from sender, along a variety of telecommunications equipment platforms, through divergent networks, to a receiver and back – using systems from multiple attending vendors. This controlled field testing allows vendors to address compatibility problems across a broad range of platforms, and helps ensure that when the wireless product reaches the consumer it will perform seamlessly.

The initial focus of the Mobile Data Initiative was on the GSM 900/1800 frequencies in Europe. In August 1997, the organization was extended to North America to include the PCS technologies.

MDI's vision is, of course, that people on the go, away from the office - even abroad - will be able to perform all their computing tasks - with just a mobile computer and a cellular phone. The workplace will become every place. It will become easier and faster than ever before to exchange text messages, data files, e-mail and faxes, and to access LANS, intranets and the Internet over wireless data networks.