mobilkom austria, and fring, a mobile internet service and community service provider, have jointly launched a partner program for the mobile internet, including mVoIP, instant messaging and more.
Following the adoption of the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) telecommunications standard, fring has developed a dedicated version of its mobile client to support the functionalities of mobilkom austria's service A1 over IP, along with additional popular internet communities. This is said to be a first step of the partner program – fring plans to expand its portfolio to include additional features of mobilkom austria's A1 over IP, providing a true convergence of residential and mobile SIP telephony, mobile community and mobile internet provision.
Hannes Ametsreiter, CMO mobilkom austria and CMO Telekom Austria TA said, explaining the objectives of the partner program: "Internet services and mobile communications will become increasingly integrated. We were among the first operators to adopt the international SIP standard. Through the partnership with fring we can demonstrate today how the two worlds will merge in the future."
Avi Shechter, fring co-founder and CEO, added: "We are delighted to be working with mobilkom austria, a network operator who is among the first to truly embrace mobile internet communication and communities and build it into their business. The A1 over IP offering demonstrates mobilkom austria's leadership and the commercial opportunities and rich user benefits available by offering integration into fring's mobile internet community and communication service."
A1 over IP was launched by mobilkom austria in 2007, primarily as a service for the PC, offering customers the possibility to make calls via ‘Voice over IP' using their mobile phone number, accept calls to the phone number on the PC and send and receive text messages on their computer. From the start, instant messaging as well as the presence function, which signals the online availability of all call parties, were elementary components of the service.
Following the launch of the partner program, these functionalities will also be supported by fring, which will continuously expand its portfolio to support all new features of A1 over IP, just as with traditional internet communities. As a result, users of the mobile version of this VoIP application will be able to keep in contact with their friends via the same service as on the PC.