In The News

In an era of cost cutting, virtual exhibitions are an excellent way to connect with customers. Providing useful information and insights into telecommunication, Comverse EXPO 2010 is cited as an example par excellence – an industry trailblazer with an innovative way of creating a buzz all throughout the year. The author judges it to be "as good as a real exhibition minus any constraints of time, place and distance," with creative use of audio-video elements heightening interest and effect.

The era of the intelligent machine is here, to a degree, and this is reflected in the recent intense interest in machine-to-machine (M2M – intelligent machines capable of exchanging info with each other). Examining new opportunities in M2M, Tim Green first of all cites Comverse's recent work with Intel on solutions for energy meters that not only measure consumption, but regulate it for more efficient use.

3G auctions may have refueled India's economy, but at a huge cost to telcos. Comverse VP Pushpendra Mankad, one of the industry experts consulted for the article, sees good cause to be optimistic about the market in India. "The onset of 3G and India's 600 million mobile phone users… will make mobile Internet a significant growth engine." He expects VAS services to "grow exponentially, giving operators a new revenue source."

According to this article marking World Telecom Day, telecommunication has become more than a basic need; it is also about personal identity and empowerment. Prominently quoted Comverse Senior VP Pushpendra Mankad notes that the "latest trend in the telecom industry is the shift to value added services." With 3G, we can expect "rich media content and services coupled with a great user experience. Data services may experience a surge in adoption and usage." VAS services will play a key role in increasing ARPU.

A combination of geospatial and mobile computing technologies, Location Based Service (LBS) is appealing to industry giants and operators as one of the new breed of personalized information utility services that have found massive uptake among the Indian subscriber base. A leading expert in the field, Daphna Steinmetz, Comverse Vice President for Innovation & Research, and Chief Innovation Officer explains, "Enhancing the user experience with context information allows for a new level of interaction between people, in a deeper level of sharing," and goes on to explore why the industry is eying innovations on this front.

Pushpendra Mankad, Senior VP, Comverse Asia., is prominently quoted in this article about machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. The number of potentially connected M2M devices far exceeds the number of mobile broadband subscribers; with chipsets getting smaller and cheaper, M2M is forecast to soon become a major new source of revenue for mobile operators.

Daphna Steinmetz, Chief Innovation Officer at Comverse, is prominently quoted in this article, discussing the promise of M2M, whose revenues are projected to quadruple from $4.3 billion in 2008 to $19 billion by 2014 -- and the opportunity M2M presents for mobile operators.

As India is about to announce the winners of 3G spectrum, Pushpendra Mankad, senior vice president of Comverse Asia was interviewed about what end users can expect in the way of new services.

Pushpendra Mankad, Senior Vice-President, Comverse Asia is one of the industry experts consulted in this article about the inter-relationship between value added services and handset features – with a special focus on the Indian market.

One of the innovative highlights at MWC for this analyst was location-aware messaging, as demonstrated by Comverse. Mashing-up location with many forms of mobile messaging has many practical benefits. For example, mobile users can receive a map of the real-time location of the person sending them a voice, text or multimedia message.

When augmented reality mixes with social networking, one result is the ability to empower a user to point a handset camera at a friend and then click to see the person’s social networking links (like Facebook), to send messages and more. Filed from Mobile World Congress, this article includes an embedded video of the service in action — recorded live on the spot at the industry event.

Daphna Steinmetz, Chief Innovation Officer for Comverse, is prominently quoted in this article about the promise and the possible downsides of augmented reality, which overlays facts and figures from the Internet and other sources onto the real world to create a combined image rich in functional benefits. Steinmetz discusses current research in her laboratories regarding augmented reality mobile applications.

Pushpendra Mankad, Senior Vice President of Comverse, Asia talks about the new VAS offerings and the potential of the Indian VAS market in a one-on-one interview with CIOL.

Addressing a wide range of topical industry issues – messaging growth, mobilization of the Web and more — Comverse Asia Senior Vice President Pushpendra Mankad shows how the adoption of consolidated messaging platform with a well-defined service roadmap can allow operators to address their current needs for a cost-efficient, robust and future-proof messaging platform.

In a wide-ranging interview, Pushpendra Mankad, Senior Vice President, Comverse Asia discusses 3G’s impact on current Asian VAS market trends, including the surge in data usage, the transition to rich media and content VAS services such as gaming, mobile imagery, streaming audio and video, and the aggressive entry into the mobile content market of new players such as music and film companies and game makers.

With proprietary software having shipped on more than 500 million mobile devices, and with the emergence of promises for successful mobile ecosystems from industry giants, there is a growing question about whether "proprietary" may be the way forward. "Is it indeed?" asks Elad Granot, Director of Technology Strategy at Comverse

In this article investigating where location is going in the mobile environment, the first expert consulted is Daphna Steinmetz, Vice President of Comverse Innovations. Beyond navigation, says Steinmetz, there are many opportunities to integrate location into a range of inventive applications for more personalized and context-aware services, and she offers examples from the messaging and search arenas.

Pushpendra fields a variety of questions about the Indian telecom market and the industry in general, discussing a range of topics: the key factors affecting ARPU, the hottest growth areas and future directions of value-added services, the influence and promise of 3G, how billing and active customer management can help operators achieve greater business growth, and more.

In a report from the ITU Telecom 2009 show, Ray Le Maistre writes: “… you might find the Comverse Inc. stand alluring: The software specialist is unveiling a number of application innovations, including "scented messaging." Scent it and send it? We'll see. Light Reading might wave its schnoz in the direction of the Comverse stand and see what whiffs it picks up.”

Comverse Asia Senior VP Mankad Pushpendra analyzes why mobile number portability is becoming increasingly significant in India and around the globe. He delineates several varieties of number portability, bringing to light benefits and challenges to operators. Number portability “promises to usher in a new era of differentiation based on services,” and Comverse, he notes, is geared to enable “operators to have their finger on the pulse of the business at all times.”

Ofer Razon, Director of Marketing, Comverse Messaging & Mobile Advertising explains why operators taking the long-term view are looking at the infrastructure behind their messaging services to increase efficiency and stabilize costs in light of the current market changes and those ahead.

David Heller, Comverse Director VAS Sales, Latin America, fields a wide range of questions concerning the Latin American market: the state of the industry, evolving technologies and value-added services.

Guy Yaniv, VP & GM Comverse Mobile Advertising Division, speaking at the Global Messaging Congress in London in June, discusses mobile messaging at an inflection point and the influence of the Internet experience and new players entering the market.

The convergence of the Web and telecom worlds is resulting in profound changes in the way people communicate. Ofer Razon throws light upon the radical transformation that messaging is undergoing –and puts forward creative ways that operators can meet the challenges, increase relevancy and profitability and remain at the top of messaging value chain.

Telstra announces that it won a Comverse Innovation Award for the engineering design and architecture on its MyConnect™ MyInbox service. The award recognizes the innovative approach that Telstra has taken to develop MyInbox, the next-generation online message, contact and calendar management centre for Next G™ and BigPond® customers. Telstra is Australia's first telecommunications company to offer its subscribers a seamless and consistent messaging experience across all devices and platforms.

Gabriel Racah, Comverse’s Director of Messaging Marketing, is interviewed in an article about tackling the central issue of profitability of services. Racah points out that service providers have the ability to gain better control and lower operational costs by building next-generation networks and meshing “the whole environment.”

This article covers a speech at Mobile World Congress by Dror Bin, Group President of Comverse Products. Bin outlines an approach to defend the operator’s position in mobile messaging and to spur continued growth.

Comverse’s Reuben Braham highlights some of the key reasons that mobile is well on its way to becoming a mainstream advertising channel: operator ownership of multiple delivery channels (SMS, MMS, ringback tones, visual voicemail, etc.), valuable data on each user, the personal relationship between user and operator, incentives to users, and more.

Mobile Messaging Analyst Newsletter extensively quotes Ofer Razon, Comverse Director of Product Marketing for Converged messaging regarding challenges facing operators in the light of continues SMS market success -- and solution options.

The Virtual Worlds Forum Blog touched base with Comverse's Chief Innovation Officer Daphna Steinmetz on the achievement of being the first to make Second Life run over a mobile handset, and an iPhone and to see if there has been more developments in this direction.

This article explains why we can expect to see operators in India offering more Value Added Services, and probes which services we can expect to see there.

Comverse, which provides communications and billing software to telecom companies, has launched a mobile ad platform for wireless operators worldwide.

See a short video on YouTube about Comverse's mobile technology that brings Second Life to an iPhone. This demonstration was shown at Mobile World Congress 2008.

The Birth of User-Generated Content and Social Communities By Dror Bin, General Manager of Comverse Messaging.

We need to look at how to develop MMS, MIM and even totally integrated messaging solutions to offer a richer and more lucrative telemedia.

John Delaney, Principal Analyst with Ovum spoke at a seminar organized by messaging specialist Comverse on the future of messaging.

During the CTIA trade show, well known technology reporter Victor Suarez interviewed Javier Jimenez, Vice-president and General Manager, Comverse Latin America.

Kevin Fitchard finally saw something at CTIA worth taking a look at; he stumbled upon the Comverse booth. Kevin was not supposed to brief with Comverse, but found himself intrigued by the Second Life demo they were exhibiting.

Second Life, whose residents live on their beloved Grid, has new software that allows its users to log in using a mobile phone and communicate with other residents using text messages.

With new software by Comverse, citizens of the burgeoning online universe Second Life will never have to leave their cozy virtual world, even when they're away from their computers, using mobile phones.

Reuters article focuses on how Comverse has created solutions for messaging and remote gaming for Second Life on Java-enabled mobile phones, and for IP TV settop boxes.

As carriers find a comfortable formula, MMS usage is experiencing rapid growth. While MMS still falls behind standard SMS text messaging, Comverse’s CMO James Colby believes MMS has just begun its growth spurt in the mobile space.

Feature considers that as SMS take-up continues apace among Americans, the long-held view that the U.S. mobile messaging market would be a much more fertile ground for PC-derived services such as IM and e-mail is coming under question.

Even though it might look like MMS, IM and other forms of messaging could lead to the decline in SMS revenue, this is not the case.

This stand-alone article by Kevin Fitchard features Comverse Integrated Messaging strategy and next-generation application Message Broker technology.

Welcome to issue 16, in which we invite you to consider one of the more entertaining statistics thrown up by GSM. It is this: many of those present at its launch would have scoffed at the possibility that GSM might one day be used by 100 million people.

ESPN Mobile, which is due to launch as an MVNO early next year, has chosen Brightpoint North America to manage logistics services, such as inventory management.

The MVNO market was once the domain of speculators, a place in which the rumors were always true because no one confirmed or denied them.

Parte dos clientes da TIM da área 11 vem enfrentando dificuldades para acessar a caixa postal nos últimos dias. O serviço fica indisponível por horas. A empresa justifica o problema em decorrência de uma atualização da plataforma.

The feature article discusses mobility and the various companies engaged in the wired and wireless technologies development.

Phone+ has compiled a list of what to watch in technology innovation. Comverse is chosen as Best of Breed for its MVNO suite for enhancing the delivery of personalized content.

SMS is riding a growing wave of popularity. Global consumption will increase from 760 billion in 2004 to a mind-boggling 2,379 billion messages in 2010 — generating a whopping $50 billion in operator revenues.

MVNO Operators are ready for the passage to marketing in the wireless realm, which in introducing new back office options. Big brands such as Walt Disney, ESPN, Ikea are driving the prepaid trend and outsourcing OSS functions.

Voicemail technology goes through evolution every couple of years. Video voicemail is becoming a new option in this realm of mobile communications.

Comverse announces the availability of full range of service for mobile virtual operator network enabler technologies. Comverse provides flexible business models that can host the necessary data center or support the existing data center.

Contributed article written by Ilan Reiter. MMS is widely accepted and being integrated into most of today’s cell phones, unfortunately usage isn’t experiencing comparable growth.

The Blackberry 7100g’s is a development made through new software and more streamlined thumb-board.

Handango announces new versions of its software to target new customers in North America and Europe. The new versions are designed for Blackberry and BenQ devices.

Comverse announced a mobile application that lets its users know when someone they are calling is available, and the best method to contact them.

Comverse has announced that Sichuan Mobile Communications Corporation has deployed its Intelligent Short Message Service Center (ISMSC) to handle its increased SMS text messaging needs.

Comverse announced the release of its first presence server, designed to add real-time presence and functionality to messaging services.

Comverse unveiled their ISMS shield, which blocks spam on text messaging devices. This innovative new software is also designed to adapt to future detection methods and to be open to third-party tools.

Interoperability is the biggest barrier to broad adoption of network-based multimedia messaging, but Comverse announced an MMS Exchange service this week that helps break down that barrier.

I saw my business colleague was on an important call. I knew better than to bother him because he wasn’t able to talk. The visual cues told me I should leave him a message. I knew where he was, how he felt, and that he wasn’t available.

Verizon Wireless, the nation’s leading wireless service provider, and Yahoo!, a leading global Internet company, today announced that Yahoo!® Messenger is now available on Verizon Wireless’ Mobile IM service.

Mobile data player Comverse is the latest big name to wade into the multi-network mobile instant messaging arena, debuting its new wireless IM offering for carriers at the 3GSM World Congress show in Cannes this week.