The regional network operator, developer of the UK’s largest WiMAX-class broadband network, appoints new Board members

Telabria, the award-winning UK regional network operator, has secured a first round of funding in excess of £1m ($1.8m) from private and institutional sources.  The funding will be used to develop the company’s WiMAX-class wireless broadband network
delivering data and voice services to residential and business customers in South East England.  “Telabria has a rapid growth plan,” said Charles Blount, Chief Financial Officer.  “This round will allow us to expand our wireless network services and develop our products to meet increasing demand.”  The company plans to raise further funds in the coming months.

An early member of the WiMAX Forum, an industry body promoting wireless broadband technology, Telabria announced plans in November 2004 to deploy wide area WiMAX-based networks to provide business-class wireless broadband
services for data and voice. Since that time, Telabria has been constructing a high-capacity backbone of fiber and licensed band microwave links that currently encompasses over 1,300 square kilometers, making it one of the largest WiMAX-class network deployments in Europe. Telabria also
develops and manufactures wireless mesh radio equipment for metropolitan Wi-Fi networks, and public transportation applications providing Wi-Fi access over cellular 3G networks.

One of the participants in Telabria’s initial round is Faroese Telecom (FT), the national carrier of the Faroe Islands.  FT delivers nationwide fixed and mobile GRPS/EDGE telephony and DSL broadband services, as well as digital terrestrial television (DTT).  More recently, FT acquired a national 3.5GHz
spectrum for delivery of WiMAX-class wireless broadband services.  “Our investment in Telabria reflects our belief that WiMAX has a significant role to play in the future of telecommunications,” said Trondur Djurhuus, VP & Chief Development Officer of Faroese Telecom.  “We believe Telabria is very well positioned to take full advantage of WiMAX in deploying next-generation broadband services in the UK and we look forward to working with the company closely to make it a success.”

As a result of the investment round, the company has appointed Trondur Djurhuus and Hans Christian Iversen to the Board; Mr. Iversen is a partner at Roland Berger, the  London-based strategy consultants, with considerable
experience in large-scale telecom, technology and media company management.

MyJotter launches speech to text serviec

UK based telecoms messaging specialist MyJotter.com today announced the launch of its new voice-to-text solution.  The service, available now to UK mobile users, enables callers to dictate voicemail messages which are then transcribed to text by a team of professional audio typists and sent to the destination of the caller’s choice – either via SMS or email – 24 hours per day.

“In a few moments MyJotter literally turns talk into text,” confirms David Cosserat, CEO, MyJotter.  “This is invaluable if you need to write a note or draft a document, for example between meetings, while in an airport, or when driving.”

Callers use a dedicated MyJotter premium rate telephone number to relay anything from a short memo to a full sales call report.  Transcribed text can then either be sent to a colleague or friend or back to the caller’s own email address for further editing later. 

“One of the great benefits of the service is that is allows people to make use of down-time so cost effectively,” continues Cosserat.  “It takes very little time to leave a voicemail and so a message that takes 10 seconds to dictate would cost just 17p – not to mention the time saved typing!”

Registration to the service is easy and free on www.myjotter.com.   In addition, the website allows users to import colleagues’ and friends’ email and phone details so messages can be sent to a chosen recipient by simply stating the contact’s name and delivery method (SMS or email) at the start of the voicemail.  By default, if recipient details are not supplied, the transcribed text will be emailed to the caller’s own email address.

In addition to the UK premium rate billing model MyJotter offers per-transcribed-word monthly billing to corporates based in the UK, US and Canada.  MyJotter plans to introduce further, pre-paid account facilities later this year that will then be progressively rolled out to additional countries around the world.

“Although the concept of voice-to-text is not new,” concludes Cosserat, “we believe the take-up for mainstream use of such a service will be substantial.  In a world when every second is becoming more precious, to be able take advantage of down-time in such an effective way is a particularly compelling proposition.”

To try MyJotter’s voice-to-text messaging service click the link below.

External Links

MyJotter

DA Group (DA), developer of character content for web and mobile, has struck a deal with Momentum, a Scandinavian-based content provider that operates through an extensive network of retailers across most European countries under their HOOHA brand.

The HOOHA brand and powerful retail distribution network will sell DA’s full range of Yomego video downloads, wallpapers and messaging solutions directly to the consumer.

The deal for DA’s rich emotive content follows a string of new contracts with content companies in the UK, Europe, the Far East and Australia, including Jamster, PNC, UK and Response Media.

Mike Antliff, CEO of DA Group plc, said,

“I am hugely encouraged by the number of new contracts for Yomego we are currently winning. The quality of our character content is having an impact on all the content providers we meet and gives them something very distinctive in their own portfolios.

“For us, however, the real endorsement is the number of companies wanting to promote Yomego and use it within their own marketing campaigns. This will help drive usage as well as ensure that our brand gets very positive exposure.”

As the Barclays Premiership kicks off this weekend, 3 has announced over 270,000 registrations for its football service including video highlights, text alerts, club news and video goal alerts.

Gareth Jones, 3’s COO commented: “3 leads the market with the most innovative and entertaining services on mobile and 3’s football offering is no exception. 270,000 fans have already signed up for our football alerts in time for the new season, that’s 3 times the capacity of the new Wembley Stadium.”

3 offers fans the very best of football on mobile with manager interviews, video previews and analysis, UEFA Champions League highlights and content from Soccer AM, Sky Sports and Football 365.

Every Saturday throughout the Barclays Premiership season, 3’s customers can watch video highlights of all the afternoon’s matches at 5:15, with all other matches available just five minutes after the whistle. On 3, you can even sign-up for club news and score alerts sent straight to your inbox.

At peak times last season, more fans were following football on 3 than walking through the turnstiles at Premiership clubs.

New name for merged CSA Wireless and MAT-Jaybeam

Following the acquisition of CSA Wireless by MAT-Jaybeam in April 2005 and the creation of a major market share leader in the design and production of base station antennas for the wireless industry, MAT-Jaybeam and CSA Wireless today announced the new name for the combined Company – JAYBEAM Wireless.

JAYBEAM Wireless will continue to focus fully on the antenna market, making it one of the largest antenna focused companies in the world. Jaybeam Wireless has a full product line of Base station (mobile wireless), Repeater, Omni, Yagi, Log periodic, PMR, Tetra, Marine, WLAN, In-building and HF antennas via the merged companies.

Jim Hartman, CEO, JAYBEAM Wireless, said “With the new JAYBEAM Wireless name and organisation in place, we look forward to providing our customers with an improved product
offering, customer service and flexibility, that will allow us to meet and exceed the requirements of an increasingly competitive market place. Our mission is to provide technically superior wireless antennas with the industries’ shortest lead times, the best customer service and the most competitive prices for our established, new and future customers. With the combined strengths of our merged companies and five locations around the world, we are in a substantially stronger position to better serve our customers and compete in this marketplace.”

JAYBEAM Wireless designs and supplies Cellular Base Station antennas for Network Operators world-wide from single to multiband antennas for 800 to 2100MHz, with Remote Electrical Tilt and Manual Adjustable Tilt solutions, together with low visual solutions and Microcell products.

In addition, JAYBEAM Wireless also supplies Tetra and PMR Base Station and Mobile Antennas, SHF and Radio Access Antennas, Marine Antennas and Military products including HF & MF antennas and portable Tactical Masts. JAYBEAM Wireless has operations in Amboise, France, Rochester and  Wellingborough, UK and Hickory, NC, USA, serving the European, African, Middle and Far East and the Americas
wireless infrastructure markets.

In addition, the company has an operation located in Sterling, Virginia, USA that provides HF antennas to the military market in the Americas. This location will continue to operate as C & S
Antennas serving the military communications marketplace.
The origins of the Company began in the 1940’s with Jaybeam and CSA Wireless producing broadcast and military antennas. MAT Equipment origins began in the 1970’s with Marine and
PMR antennas. MAT-Jaybeam was formed with the acquisition of MAT-Equipment in 1987 and Jaybeam Ltd. in 1991. In the 1980’s all of the companies moved into the wireless mobility
antenna market, using the heritage of demanding military applications to develop a reputation for excellent field reliability.

Sign reseller agreement

Azure Solutions, the revenue-assurance company, today announced that it has signed a reseller agreement with Narus, a provider of unified IP Management and Security. The agreement brings together both companies’ combined IP and revenue-assurance expertise to enable them to provide operators worldwide with the capability to bill for usage and identify fraud effectively on their next-generation telecom networks.

With the increasing complexity of value chains and partnerships in next-generation IP networks, a key requirement for operators is to ensure all relevant data is secured by monitoring traffic. The Narus IP Platform captures and analyses IP traffic in real time across an entire IP network.

Combining this with Azure’s interconnect, data-integrity (Certo) and fraud-detection capability, operators can now extract information from IP networks to validate billing records and identify fraud on voice and data services.

Through this partnership operators will be able to maximise revenues through the introduction of differential billing for next-generation products and services, as well as the detection of revenue leakage due to fraud and third-party services on their networks.  The partnership also complements Azure’s next-generation revenue-assurance product portfolio, following the recent launches of Azure Inter-Party Management and the next-generation Azure Fraud Control System.

John Cronin, president and CEO of Azure Solutions, said: “Being able to understand activity on their networks is the first stage for carriers wanting to implement revenue assurance for next-generation networks.  This partnership with Narus will enable us to combine our sales and R&D development to deliver even more effective next-generation revenue
assurance.”

Jay Thomas, vice president of product marketing at Narus, said: “Customers are looking for more information about their networks and traffic. Combining Azure’s capabilities with Narus unified IP Management and Security brings a new  understanding of traffic, capabilities, and revenue to carriers’ businesses.”

Andrew Corporation will offer mobile location systems to Nokia’s GSM network base station subsystem (BSS) customers under an agreement completed between the two companies.  In addition, Andrew will license from Nokia certain technologies that will be used in the supplied location systems.

Mobile messaging company rewards head of sales

Mobeon has appointed Huw Hampson-Jones as its new CEO. Hampson-Jones takes over global responsibility for leading the company and increasing the 70% market growth achieved in the past year by the mobile messaging provider.

In his role as executive vice president of sales at Mobeon, Huw achieved sales growth of 95% between 2003-4 and has established an installed base of 34 million IP voicemail boxes globally. His promotion to CEO marks Mobeon’s aim for continuous rapid growth during 2005.

Prior to joining Mobeon, Hampson-Jones was executive vice president of iD2 Technologies AB, which was sold successfully to Sonera of Finland in July 2000. Before that he spent almost ten years with Siemens where, on leaving, he was senior VP of telecommunications worldwide for Siemens Business Services.

“The past year has exceeded all expectations for Mobeon, and we intend to build on the long-standing relationships established with mobile operators across the globe,” said Hampson-Jones.

“Our unique ability to track consumer behaviour and help operators develop services that their subscribers want, enables them to generate additional revenue and stay ahead of the competition. Innovative services such as personalised videomail and 3D avatars also help end users stay connected to their world in a quick and easy way. It is this market intelligence that puts Mobeon at the forefront of messaging innovation,” he added.

“Our success in global sales can be directly attributed to Huw’s flair for leadership and dedication to customer relationships. I have absolute confidence in his ability to lead Mobeon to even greater heights in the future,” said Ross Bott, chairman of Mobeon.