Mobile ad firms launch rich media services

16 February 2012

Two mobile advertising companies, Adfonic and Sofialys, have each launched Rich Media services targeting brands that would like to deliver richer, app-like experiences on mobile devices.

Sofialys announced the launch of its in-house Rich Media Factory, and said it wanted to simplify the process of building and distributing rich media ads to consumers all across the globe.

Adfonic also announced the availability of its rich media offering, enabling ad formats that are designed to facilitate a deeper level of consumer engagement, with greater opportunities for interaction between brands and consumers.

Telenor settles Vimpelcom claim

15 February 2012

Telenor has called off an arbitration claim, lodged in January 2011, to protect its voting rights in Russian operator Vimpelcom.

The operator has announced that it has bought 234,000,000 VimpelCom preferred shares from Weather Investments II (Weather), for US$374.4 million. Weather is the investment vehicle through which Naguib Sawiris and his family hold their interests in VimpelCom.

Weather gained its shares in Vimpelcom when Vimpelcom acquired WIND Telecom early in 2011. Telenor protested at the time that it would not accept a diminution in its voting rights.

At the time, Telenor held 36% of the voting shares, but saw that fall to 25% after the Vimpelcom/Wind merger. The deal just agreed now bumps Telenor's voting share to 36.3%, with Alfa Group's Altimo Telecom holding 25% and Weather's voting share reduced from 29% to 18%.

Don't mind the gap? Vodafone results

09 February 2012

Vodafone's data revenue growth continued to match its traffic growth in the last three months of 2011 — puncturing the current industry orthodoxy that data traffic growth is running out of control, threatening profitability as a result.

The operator reported data revenue growth in its third quarter (Oct-December 2011) of 22%, and traffic volume growth of 20%.

CEO Vittorio Colao told Mobile Europe on a results call this morning that the operator had achieved parity between revenue and traffic growth by "proactive management", especially of "ultra high" data users, mainly through more targetted tariff and traffic management. The slowdown in the growth rate of bandwidth demand on the network was also "a little bit the numbers" he said, meaning that previously high rates of growth were bound to slow a little in any case.

Alcatel-Lucent launches expanded CEM portfolio

07 February 2012

Alcatel-Lucent has announced a major Customer Experience Management (CEM) software launch. Bundling existing BSS and OSS software with a variety of new packages, the company is aiming its Motive Customer Experience Solutions (CXS) portfolio squarely at the growing need within operators to reduce churn and increase revenues by improving all aspects of the customer experience.

Greg Owens, Director, Customer Experience Solutions Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent said, "We are launching a brand new portfolio to help service providers define and execute on their CEM strategies.

"We've taken our existing assets and brought them into one unified portfolio in the company. We've also recognised that we have had gaps and we've filled those with some active investments in new technology."