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“Voice-based Twitter” service aimed at raising operator revenues

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Aepona and Bubble Motion Partner for Voice-Based Social Communication Service

Aepona and Bubble Motion have announced a partnership that they say will allow mobile operators to rapidly generate new revenue streams.

Bubbly, best described as a “voice-based Twitter”, is a social messaging service created by Bubble Motion where people share voice and text updates with friends, family, fans and followers via mobile phone. Bloggers record status updates, in their own voice, and their followers are notified to click and listen. The service is enabled by Aepona’s Telecom Application Gateway platform, which allows operators to quickly and easily launch a broad range of value-added voice and data services.

The Aepona Telecom Application Gateway (TAG) is at the core of Aepona’s Open IN solution portfolio, which combines best-of-breed third party applications that are tightly integrated with the TAG platform to create end-to-end solutions that solve current operator business challenges. Besides the Bubbly service, Aepona also offers converged charging and roaming solutions as part of its Open IN suite.

“Declining revenue per subscriber is a reality for many operators in fiercely competitive markets, hence the importance of value added services from companies like Bubble Motion,” commented Paul Palmer, VP of sales at Bubble Motion. “By offering features that drive mobile phone usage, operators are able to use Bubbly to drive new sources of revenue, while leveraging existing infrastructure investments that would otherwise remain untapped.”

“The Bubbly service, when combined with Aepona’s TAG, can be delivered into the network quickly, easily and cost-effectively, avoiding the costly network integration costs of typical ‘stovepipe’ solutions” commented Paul Shore, head of Aepona’s Open IN business unit. “In addition, having deployed the TAG platform, operator can then go on to build further Value Added Services as it comes with a complete Java-based application development environment, future-proofing their investment and maximizing RoI.”

Greenpacket’s ANDSF client through IoT testing

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Greenpacket’s ANDSF client completed IOT with Bridgewater Policy Servers

Greenpacket, a leading developer of next generation mobile broadband and networking solutions, announced today its successful Inter-Operability Testing (IOT) with 3GPP-compliant ANDSF Policy Servers, such as Bridgewater. The success represents a strategic combination of client and server side technologies that enable end-to-end network to end-user deployment of dynamic data offload for operators globally.

The ANDSF connectivity client solution makes it possible for operators to maintain and extend network-level data traffic policies and controls on its subscribers, even when they switch to WiFi networks. The ANDSF client provides real-time or predicted measure of the network’s congestion levels and intelligently selects a better network for its subscribers. As a result, subscribers will always experience better service; smooth and seamless connectivity networks from the operators.

Kelvin Lee, Senior General Manager of Greenpacket says “Most operators in the market already have policy controllers within their networks. Now, with Greenpacket’s ANDSF client, operators can ride on the wide availability of WiFi hotspots as their next step, in deploying dynamic data offload for better service delivery.”

Lee added “Operators don’t even need to invest additional Capex to upgrade their Operation and Support System (OSS) and Radio Access Network (RAN) just to manage the data offload.  In addition, with bandwidth optimization operators can stand to benefit by creating different service packages for targeted users.”

Greenpacket’s ANDSF client together with its partner’s policy controller, are currently being tested by some of its existing software customers. The company is also in discussion with other major global operators in North America and APAC regions for the integrated offering. 

The ANDSF client is part of Greenpacket’s Intouch Connectivity Management Platform (ICMP) software to deliver the best in Mobility Management. Other available solutions such as iWLAN Client which allows operators to manage data offload in a secured manner and Mobile IP Client that ensures session persistence; without interrupting a running application when switching seamlessly between networks.

Avea using Tektronix for network performance

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Turkish operator Avea has selected Tektronix Communications’ Iris products to provide insight and visibility into how its network and services are performing.

“To handle the rapid growth in data traffic following the launch of its 3G network, Avea required a turnkey solution as well as a partnership that would enable market readiness,” said Mark Driedger, vice president, Network Management, Tektronix Communications. “Our Iris suite of products provides Avea a real-time view of end-to-end network and service performance for data services, which facilitates faster resolution of customer-impacting issues.”

Tektronix Communications’ Iris suite of products will allow Avea to monitor their entire mobile network end-to-end to detect any capacity bottlenecks, characterize the traffic and enable faster resolution of network and service issues before they impact customer experience. Despite the challenges brought forth through the surge in mobile data traffic, these products will enable Avea to better understand how their network resources are being utilized through the use of real-time and historical statistics and pre-defined KPIs.

“We initially selected Tektronix Communications’ because of the strength of their Iris suite offering and its ability to collect and correlate data and turn that data into actionable information to better manage our networks, services and customers more efficiently and profitably,” said Avea’s Senior Network Director, Mr. Cemal Baki. “Since our decision to purchase, the team at Tektronix Communications has taken a proactive approach to partner with us to quickly and efficiently get the solution up and running across four of our sites in Turkey.”

Avea has installed the turnkey solution which includes IrisView, the Iris analyzer toolset and the Iris Performance Intelligence solution in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara to monitor data service traffic across their network. With Tektronix Communications’ solution, Avea should be able to leverage their investment to process raw data collected from their network to generate an enhanced CDR that can be used by customer experience management (CEM) systems and third party OSS/BSS applications now and into the future.

Visual ringtone app hits 100,000 downloads in 30 days

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An application that creates and displays a slideshow of a contact’s Facebook photos each time the user makes or receives a mobile call has been downloaded 100,000 times within 30 days of its public release.

Vringo, a provider of software platforms for mobile social and video applications, said that its Facetones app, which has been released through  mobile operators including NTT DOCOMO and Telefonica in Spain & South America, as well as appstore GetJar, has exceeded the threshold of 100,000 downloads.

The Facetones app creates an automated video slideshow using friends’ photos from social media web sites and then plays this video slideshow each time the user makes or receives a mobile call.

“Reaching 100,000 downloads within 30 days of our active marketing promotion is a significant accomplishment,” said Andrew Perlman, Vringo’s President. “The excitement of enhancing phone calls with a video slideshow of friends’ pictures from Facebook(R) is spreading rapidly. Our Facetones product has also proven attractive for our advertising partners, as we are currently filling nearly all of our rapidly expanding advertising inventory.”

Vringo recently closes a $2.5 million financing led by prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms Benchmark Capital and DAG Ventures.

Facetones initially connects with Facebook and Vringo expects to integrate Facetones with other social media networks and photo sites in the near future. Facetones is a trademark of Vringo, Inc. and is not sponsored or endorsed by Facebook nor is Facebook affiliated with Vringo, Inc.

Orange selects CustVox for Swiss CEM operations

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CustVox has been selected by France Telecom to deliver a multi-lingual Customer Experience Management platform for its Swiss affiliate, Orange.

CustVox said that the agreement would significantly improve customer loyalty and share of wallet for the telecom giant.
The decision to pick CustVox came after a six-months pilot. After two months using a CustVox “out of box” solution, Orange was able to identify and target customers who were extremely unsatisfied early in the lifecycle. In nearly 55% of the cases they were able to improve their satisfaction.

The rollout will begin immediately to support France Telecom’s goal to position Orange as the “Best loved communication brand” in the market.

Customer churn and low retention levels have long plagued the telecom market. Recapturing customer loyalty continues to be a key priority in the telecom marketplace. CustVox solution tackles Customer churn head on.

The platform offered by CustVox helps manage the customer experience over the life cycle, helping businesses in 3 specific areas:
•    retention
•    increase share-of-wallet
•    driving new business

“France Telecom’s selection of CustVox validates our sound strategy and leadership position in CEM,” said Federico Cesconi, CEO of CustVox AG. “This is where they can focus on significantly increasing loyalty within the Orange customer community, accomplish a reduction in customer churn, and increase share of wallet.”

“We are looking forward to working with an industry leader like France Telecom and the Orange brand, as the CustVox CEM solution continues to gain traction globally,” said Donat Grimm, Chief Marketing Officer of CustVox. “We are pleased they will now harness the power of our multi-cross-channeling CEM solution.”

Skyhook and PlaceIQ to combine location databases for developers and advertisers

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“PlaceIQ shows who the people are and what they are doing, while SpotRank shows how many are actually present at any given time and place.”

Skyhook, the world leader in location information, context and intelligence, today announced that it has teamed up with PlaceIQ to layer SpotRank’s location usage data over PlaceIQ’s location intelligence. The two data engines serve as complements, where SpotRank provides aggregate usage behavior down to 50 meters and PlaceIQ adds detailed context about the dynamic attributes of the location and its audience profile.

PlaceIQ transforms location into context, providing a deep understanding of the actual dynamic context of a specific hyper local location. PlaceIQ enables highly-efficient, privacy-friendly mobile audience targeting, improved relevancy in ad selection, as well as the ability to turn location-aware mobile impressions into valuable audience profiles and context. These capabilities result in a more targeted and effective mobile media spend, better relevancy and optimization in ad serving, and increased monetization of supply side inventory. PlaceIQ shows who the people are and what they are doing, while SpotRank shows how many are actually present at any given time and place.

SpotRank is a data intelligence service from Skyhook powered by tens of millions of devices making hundreds of millions of location requests per day over several years. SpotRank predicts the density of people in predefined urban square-block areas worldwide at any hour, any day of the week. No other data source is available that assembles aggregate mobile request traffic with comparable accuracy and completeness. In fact, no other company even attempts to open up their data sources for public use and analysis.

“Skyhook and PlaceIQ share a common belief and understanding as to the huge value location data can provide across a spectrum of industries and applications,” said Duncan McCall, co-founder and CEO of PlaceIQ. “Skyhook’s digital busyness data is a very powerful input into the PlaceIQ context engine, and provides a much deeper understanding of the context of a location by enabling PlaceIQ to better understand the actual busyness patterns of a location, and how and why those change over time.”

Also very important to PlaceIQ is the anonymous nature of Skyhook’s data, meaning it contains no user information or personal information, and does not track individual users. Maintaining a privacy-friendly approach to location context is at the core of PlaceIQ and Skyhook’s approach.

“Laying our SpotRank data over PlaceIQ’s has created a powerful tool for developers and advertisers,” said Ted Morgan, founder and CEO of Skyhook. “The combination provides insight into human behavior that has never existed before.”

TeliaSonera to increase ownership in Kcell

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TeliaSonera and Kazakhtelecom have signed a binding Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) regarding Kazakhtelecom’s intention to conduct an IPO of GSM Kazakhstan LLP, a company that operates under the brand Kcell.

The contemplated final outcome of the transactions according to the MoU, is that Kazakhtelecom will sell its shares in an Initial Public Offering (IPO), apart from 24% plus one share that will be acquired by TeliaSonera (or by TeliaSonera’s subsidiary Fintur Holdings). The transactions will be completed at market value. Any sale to TeliaSonera and IPO of shares are subject to a number of conditions being fulfilled by both parties.

Presently, GSM Kazakhstan LLP is owned by Fintur Holdings (51%) and Kazakhtelecom (49%). Fintur Holdings B.V. is owned by TeliaSonera (58.55%) and Turkcell (41.55%).

“We are very pleased with the signing of this MoU, as it is a clear step forward in TeliaSonera’s strategy of increasing ownership in core holdings. Kcell operates in the largest Eurasian market, has taken a clear market leader position, and shown remarkable growth over the years. A sale by Kazakhtelecom of an additional stake in Kcell to us would increase our ownership in a company where we already have management and operational responsibility. We are looking forward to reaching another milestone in our Eurasia growth strategy,” said Tero Kivisaari, President, TeliaSonera Eurasia.

Opera acquires white label app store provider

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CEO says Opera moving from browser to “fully integrated mobile services” company

Browser and content optimisation company Opera Software has acquired Handster Inc, a mobile application store platform company.

Handster, based in Northbrook, Illinois, with operations in Odessa, Ukraine, offers services to mobile operators, device manufacturers and application stores globally. The company’s offerings include a white-label app store platform, content management, developer tools, content curation and financial settlement services.

The Handster platform supports Google Android, Java, Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, netbook and tablet applications. Handster customers include some of the world’s largest mobile operators, mobile platform providers and device manufacturers such as MTS, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei and LG.

Launched in March this year, the Opera Mobile Store is now a top 10 mobile app store globally, serving consumers on virtually every mobile platform, including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Java, and Symbian, as well as web content.

“Opera is evolving from being a browser company into a fully integrated mobile services company and this acquisition is an important step in that direction. We are delighted to welcome the Handster team into the Opera family. Handster will enable us to strengthen our mobile store offerings to consumers, mobile operators and handset manufacturers,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software.

“Handster could not have found a better suitor,” said Handster Founder and CEO Victor Shaburov. “The combination of our platform, along with Opera’s position in the market, will make a big impact on the mobile ecosystem, benefiting developers, publishers, operators and handset manufacturers around the world.”
Shaburov will join the Opera Mobile Consumer and Publisher management team based in San Mateo, California, USA.

Telefonica working with Layar on IRIS AR project

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Layar, a provider of mobile augmented reality (AR) technology, has entered into a strategic partnership with Telefonica I+D to provide it with its Visual Search Technology: IRIS. Visual Search enables Layar to search through millions of images to identify these images and correctly augment them on the mobile phone resulting in a more intuitive user experience.

Visual Search is a key component in the delivery of vision based Augmented Reality services to end-users. It makes it possible for real world objects to work as identifiers and/or hyperlinks for augmented reality experiences. Layar is adding IRIS Visual Search capability to their Layar Reality Browser, making it significantly  easier for users to discover relevant Augmented Reality content.

The goal of Telefonica’s IRIS project is to develop a service that provides information related to an object just by taking a picture of it. The object needs no special packaging, tag or marker. For this objective, Telefónica I+D has developed and patented proprietary visual recognition technology. This technology enables the identification of objects such as supermarket products, logos, posters, or paintings among others. The collaboration of this project with Layar is framed within the Open Innovation initiative of Telefónica I+D.

David Marimon, Initiative Leader at Telefonica I+D, said, “When we started our collaboration, we immediately saw the synergy that we were building. Our visual recognition engine is a ground breaking technology delivered to users. Empowering Layar with this technology was a natural step.”

Dirk Groten, CTO Layar, “Implementing Layar Vision, we immediately envisioned a solution encompassing both aspects of visual object recognition: on the one hand, a client side technology that recognizes and tracks images instantaneously based on their feature set (fingerprint), but it’s limited to a few dozen images due to memory and processing power constraints. This we developed in-house. On the other hand, visual search technology, is cloud-based and allows the client to recognize a specific image amongst millions of others. Iris is perfect at solving this problem. We’ve partnered with Telefonica I+D, hosting their IRIS Visual Search technology in the cloud allowing us to scale both in terms of search traffic as well as in the number of reference images.”

Lowering cost of M2M modules widens addressable market

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Volume to Spur Market to $2.5 Billion by 2016 – ABI Research

The cellular M2M embedded module market experienced a more difficult than expected year in 2010. Although total unit volumes continued to rise, reaching nearly 34 million units shipped in 2010, total industry revenue fell from roughly $996 million in 2009 to about $841 million in 2010, reversing the upward momentum in revenue seen in 2009 as the market rebounded from its 2008 lows.

“Although total unit volume continued to grow in 2010, average selling pricings (ASPs) fell at a faster rate, leading to an overall decline in revenue,” says Sam Lucero, practice director, M2M connectivity.

“The sharp decline in ASPs is continuing in 2011 and is indicative of the fierce competition in the market, competition that has led to industry consolidation, such as Gemalto’s acquisition of Cinterion and Novatel Wireless’ acquisition of Enfora, both in 2010.

”

While module makers are challenged by both competition and an overall trend toward commoditization, the resulting declines in ASPs are broadening the addressable market for cellular M2M connectivity. As module prices decline, it becomes more feasible to embed cellular modules into a growing array of applications ranging from smart utility meters, to automobiles, to remote healthcare related devices, e.g. cardiac monitors.

“

“Ultimately, lower prices, combined with other factors that facilitate M2M application development, will lead to overall unit shipment volumes growing faster than prices are declining, and we will see overall module industry revenue grow significantly by 2016,” says Lucero.

“Consequently, falling ASPs are, in essence, benefiting module vendors as a whole, although individual vendors may not be able to survive the fiercely challenging market environment.

”

ABI Research’s report, “Cellular Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Markets”, examines the market for cellular M2M embedded modules by assessing key market trends, the competitive landscape, market shares, and important standards and technologies and by providing an extensive five-year forecast of shipments and revenue for the period from 2010 to 2016 segmented by region, application, and cellular air interface standard.

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