KIRK Telecom signs up route into British marketplace

Westcon Group, a multi-national distributor of networking technology solutions, announced that its European Comstor and Westcon divisions are now distributing wireless telephony solutions from, Danish-based manufacturer of wireless communication solutions, KIRK telecom.

Comstor and Westcon will focus on KIRK's handsets and radio infrastructure products called KIRK Wireless Servers, which are 100% compatible with Cisco CallManager and Avaya IP Office products.

By adding KIRK telecom products to its portfolio, Comstor and Westcon are able to enhance enterprise and SMB networking solutions with proven wireless products that are easy to integrate and deploy. KIRK products enable customers to access calls anywhere in the building, while enabling enhanced customer service capabilities in key sectors including: retail, healthcare and manufacturing.

KIRK telecom interfaces can connect up to 700 users, running 60 simultaneous channels. Its wireless handsets are said to be proven for their durability and seamless integration of applications.

Bernie Dodwell, alliances manager of Westcon UK Ltd, commented: "By adding KIRK wireless telephony solutions to our convergence portfolio, we are able to combine the strength of the Cisco CallManager and Avaya IP Office platform with durable KIRK handsets and KIRK wireless server radio infrastructure products. This combination creates a very compelling opportunity for our customers selling to enterprise businesses such as car dealers, retail chains, medical offices and manufacturing environments."

Ole Lysgaard Madsen, sales and marketing director of KIRK telecom, added: "Our relationship with Westcon Group is a core component of our channel strategy. By working with Westcon Group we have access to a customer base that embraces our solutions-based philosophy along with the distributor's powerful marketing tools and product portfolio."

Ericsson and TeliaSonera will conduct a joint trial of Mobile@Home, Ericsson's solution for Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), which permits the use of one single handset for both mobile and fixed telephony.

Mobile@Home turns mobile phones into IP phones in the home, using the fixed broadband network to connect calls. As soon as the user leaves home, the phone automatically and  seamlessly switches to the  mobile network. Consumers can then benefit  from the higher data speeds and better coverage at home, while  maintaining the convenience of  their mobile phones.

Ericsson's Mobile@Home solution is a completely converged mobile and IP-based telephony solution. The trial with TeliaSonera will  include technical  tests of the Ericsson UMA system, connected to TeliaSonera's network in Sweden.

Håkan Dahlström, Group Vice President Networks and Technology, TeliaSonera says: "As a leader in the migration from fixed to mobile and internet-based services, we are committed to providing our customers with solutions that are easy to use. We believe that the UMA concept will be an important part of our future offerings since UMA combines the flexibility of mobile service with the higher data speeds of broadband and the convenience of one handset."

Johan Wibergh, head of Ericsson's Market Unit Nordic & Baltics, says: "Ericsson shares TeliaSonera's vision of converged  networks and services. Mobile@Home is a great example of how we can help operators realize that vision, and a good  illustration of how Ericsson can combine its strengths in fixed and mobile networks."

Glu-branded WAP service available across Scandinavia using TeliaSonera’s Surfport platform

Glu Mobile, a leading creator and global publisher of mobile entertainment, today announced the launch of the first Glu-branded games service, allowing subscribers on TeliaSonera’s mobile network to download games from Glu’s extensive portfolio.

The service has been launched on TeliaSonera’s SurfPort mobile portal, and is currently available to mobile users in Sweden with deployments in Norway, Denmark, Finland and Lithuania to follow by the end of the year.
 
The Glu games channel includes many of Glu’s bestselling mobile games, including Who Want’s To Be A Millionaire?, Zuma, Ancient Empires and DRIV3R. Users are able to browse the games using clear, easy-to-navigate menus, with only a few clicks required to download the games directly to their handset.
 
“Launching publisher-driven direct to consumer channels is another step towards mobile games becoming truly mainstream,” said Kristian Segerstrale, vice president for production EMEA, Glu Mobile . “Managing our own branded channel on TeliaSonera’s Surfport will help customers to better understand the great value and entertainment mobile games can offer, and make the purchase process as simple as possible.” 
 
“Glu’s launch on Surfport is a great endorsement of our portal,” said Karin Rehbinder, director global content management, TeliaSonera. “Glu’s portfolio of high-quality, engaging mobile games will help us in our aim to provide SurfPort customers in the Nordic and Baltic countries with fun, useful and easy-to-use mobile internet services.”
 
SurfPort is TeliaSonera´s mobile internet portal which provides customers with quick and easy access to entertainment services, e-mail, search engines, positioning services, news services and much more. It is already available to more than 11 million consumers across Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Lithuania. The Glu games channel on SurfPort is powered by ProvisionX, the outsourced mobile gaming service delivery platform owned by Glu.
 

Qualcomm has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement with O2 UK, a leading provider of mobile services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom.

O2 UK will use uiOne to develop a consistent user interface (UI), initially for two of its own-branded X range devices. With this agreement, O2 becomes the first operator in Europe to announce plans to deploy uiOne. It is expected that O2 devices that use the new platform will be available in late 2006.

The open and flexible uiOne offering will provide the ability for UI updates to be delivered over the air (OTA). This update capability will enable O2 to provision new content into the UI such as branding refreshes, promotions and entertainment content as well as periodic software or feature upgrades.

"This agreement demonstrates O2's commitment to providing its customers with the ability to customize their user interfaces on its own branded devices," said Peggy Johnson, president of Qualcomm Internet Services. "uiOne is a logical step for true differentiation in the wireless marketplace and will provide time-to-market, revenue and branding benefits to give O2's mobile offering further differentiation in one of Europe's most competitive markets."

"Our X range devices are a key part of our business strategy. We see this uiOne implementation on part of our X range as complementary to our existing partnerships in providing a consistent user interface that our customers are able to easily identify with," said Ian Clarke, head of devices for O2 UK. "This agreement will enable O2 to further develop our understanding of customizing customers' mobile phones, allowing them to personalize their mobile experience."

uiOne is comprised of a suite of products and services, including the uiOne Toolkit, uiOne SDK (software development kit), uiOne applications, resources and templates (ART), and professional services to assist operators in getting to market.

New JRules-based system will enable online promotions for the first time

ILOG, a leading supplier of enterprise-class software components and services, has announced that Vodafone Spain has selected ILOG JRules, a key offering in ILOG's Business Rule Management System (BRMS) product line, to create a new centralized promotions platform for its 10 million customers in Spain.

Using ILOG JRules, Vodafone Spain expects to enhance its customer acquisition and customer loyalty programs and boost sales during traditionally slow periods by rapidly introducing new promotions.

In addition to allowing Vodafone to offer online promotions for the first time, a new rules-based promotions system called NPPI (New Platform of Integrated Promotions) will reduce the time-to-market of new promotions and will facilitate the creation of new and innovative promotions.

In the extremely competitive mobile phone market, a service provider's primary concern is "churn management," i.e. reducing the number of customers that move to other carriers. In Spain, Vodafone relies heavily on promotions to support both new customer growth and customer loyalty management programs to reduce churn. These programs rely on incentives for new subscribers as well as rewards for current customers.

Prior to deploying the new rule-based NPPI, the management of promotions at Vodafone Spain was a cumbersome and time-consuming task since promotions were hard-coded into different customer relationship management (CRM) and billing systems. New promotions and changes to existing promotions required code development to create or modify eligibility rules. Additional coding was then required to ensure the changes were consistent across the different systems. Vodafone Spain's marketing staff had to rely on IT developers to implement new promotions and changes, which resulted in long deployment cycles.

ILOG JRules will allow business policies that map to different promotions to be centralized and managed in a single platform. The advanced business rule management features, including the JRules repository, will give Vodafone Spain's marketing teams the tools to create or update promotions themselves, and group the related business policies into easy-to-understand decision tables, as well as monitor the response to promotions in real-time and make any necessary adjustments.

Following a short testing and debugging phase, new promotions can go into production within days instead of weeks, allowing Vodafone to be more competitive with its promotions. In addition, because ILOG JRules can process, in real time, the numerous events triggering promotions, Vodafone Spain can, for the first time, offer online promotions and notify its customers instantly of available rewards. In addition, ILOG JRules can enable the delivery of new types of promotions, such as contests, home-delivered gifts, or special "keys" for access to restricted sites.

"Improving our customer loyalty and customer acquisition programs were critical business objectives at Vodafone Spain," said Jose Ignacio Nogues, IT Manager, Product, Pricing and Billing, Vodafone Spain. "ILOG JRules brings unprecedented flexibility to our promotions management by giving our marketing experts greater control over their promotions for a faster business response time to competitive pressures, while improving our operational efficiency through faster time-to-market and consistency in policies and promotions across multiple systems and channels."

In Germany, Vodafone D2 is successfully using ILOG's BRMS as part of its Realtime Rating Solution for billing applications.

AirMagnet signs distributor for this side of the pond

AirMagnet has announced an agreement with Arc Technology, the distributor, to make AirMagnet's mobile product line available to Arc's resellers.

Arc works with companies to evaluate specific technology requirements, with an emphasis on networking and security, and offers tailored solutions and services to meet those needs.

Used by more than 4,000 corporations and organizations in over 60 countries, AirMagnet is said to be a leader in wireless LAN (WLAN) security and performance solutions.

"Arc understands that wireless technology is increasingly prevalent across all sectors as compliance and security are of key focus to the IT marketplace," said Jim Harvey, networking divisional manager at Arc Technology. "AirMagnet is clearly a best-of-breed vendor in the wireless security market space and addresses a niche created by this demand."

AirMagnet offers a suite of Wi-Fi security and troubleshooting products. The product line includes the AirMagnet Laptop Analyzer, Handheld Analyzer, AirMagnet Surveyor and AirMagnet Spectrum Analyzer - a comprehensive wireless tool set for networking professionals that runs on mobile computing platforms, enabling local security and performance troubleshooting, real-time analysis, and network planning.

"We're constantly looking for partners with the right mix of geographic and technical expertise to make our solutions optimally effective for customers," said Dean Au, president and CEO of AirMagnet. "Arc Technology is a recognized leader in Europe, and an ideal partner to extend the benefits of wireless networking to a new audience."

Dutch companies, Comsys and 3G Media Consult (3GMC), have introduced a new variant of the SpeechFrame telephony platform to the market in the shape of SpeechFrame mobile. As well as interactive telephony services, SpeechFrame also offers the possibility to send video-images in an easy way to mobile phones, says the companies.

SpeechFrame makes it possible to combine the distribution of video-images to mobile devices with interactive telephony sessions. For instance, payment for the content can be related to a certain paynumber, or a free usercode can be entered. Apart from that, additional messages can be delivered together with the video-images such as: "this video is offered to you by....", which will then be possible as well on the mobile phone.

SpeechFrame Mobile also has a database functionality so that monitoring and operational support are possible over the internet, by e-mail, sms or fax. Next to that SpeechFrame offers advanced technologies like speech recognition and text-to-speech. Moreover, the platform is very flexible and can easily be expanded; this is important because the market for mobile entertainment and mobile video services is still in an early stage. SpeechFrame Mobile is based on open standards (VXML/JAVA) and completely web-based.

Hans Stapel, manager marketing and sales at Comsys: "SpeechFrame Mobile is an authoritative solution, also unique in the Netherlands. The combination of telephony services with video is highly promising. Organisations can easily make their video publications interactive. Services offered through mobile internet can be used directly on the IVR (Interactive Voice Response system). In short, SpeechFrame increases the efficiency and control of applications."

Gerrit-Jan Konijnenberg, Managing Director at 3G Media Consult: "The idea for the new platform development arises from our practical experience. Publishing video content (MPEG or DVD), through operator portals as well as direct-to-consumer, will be supported. This offers new opportunities for mobile marketing and mobile advertising. SpeechFrame Mobile is an important step ahead in the area of mobile streaming video, and a confirmation of the leading position of Comsys and 3GMC in this fast expanding market."

RUNNet joins over 400 universities and research institutions already using Cogent bandwidth

Cogent Communications, a multinational Tier 1 Internet service provider, has announced that RUNNet, the federal network of universities across Russia, has selected Cogent as its Internet service provider.

The network will be connected to Cogent through Cogent's point of presence in Amsterdam.

Cogent's IP network spans over 46,600 Km and has over 85 points of presence in 12 countries.

RUNNet was put in place to provide Russian universities with a best-of-breed communications links to the Internet to facilitate the exchange of curriculum materials, studies and research data, and help RUNNet collaborate on research projects with other Russian and foreign universities.

"We needed a large amount of bandwidth to exchange large volumes of data reliably between our universities," said Yury Izhvanov First Deputy Director RUNNet. "After evaluating several providers, Cogent proved to be one of the best and the most cost effective solutions. Since so many American university networks like The Quilt, SURA, OARnet, MichNet are already connected to Cogent, it became an obvious choice for us."

"Cogent has had significant success as the Internet Service Provider of choice to the university and scientific research community in the US and Canada. It is a natural progression to extend this reach into other parts of the world and we are proud to welcome RUNNet on our network," said Dave Schaeffer, CEO of Cogent Communications. "The value of Cogent's pricing for Tier 1 Internet service provides the university community with ample bandwidth to meet the most cutting-edge and demanding needs of research today, without engulfing their IT budgets."