In The News

Mobile broadband is an area of rapid growth and opportunity, but the mobile industry must address challenges such as congestion, the user experience and monetization. Guy Yaniv, VP and General Manager, Value Added Services, Comverse, shows how to overcome the key challenges.

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.

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.

The article discusses the role of policy management and how it helps carriers to create new business models to generate revenues and improve the end-user experience. Tal Rotem, Comverse MIH Product Management Director, is prominently quoted, underscoring Comverse's position as a key player in the growing data management area, which closely links the Mobile Internet with BSS.

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.

Observing how the print media is being overtaken by mobile Internet consumption, Xen Mendelsohn, Comverse Mobile Advertising Product Marketing Manager, identifies opportunities for publishing industry in the mobile sphere, and explores the role of mobile advertising in those opportunities.

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.”

The article quotes Tal Rotem, Director of Product Management, Mobile Internet Gateway at Comverse, regarding HSPA devices, mobile dongles and increasing mobile data traffic.

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.

Examining the growing popularity of mobile video, Comverse Chief Innovation Officer Daphna Steinmetz explains how operators now can optimize the content environment for the mobile phone to enable users to cost effectively enjoy exactly the video content that they want to experience. Steinmetz also looks ahead at intriguing future plans in this field.

In a response to an article about the banning of Facebook in the workplace by many UK firms, Comverse Chief Innovation Officer Daphna Steinmetz points out that mobile access to Web 2.0 social networking might actually lead to a more productive workforce.

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.

Comverse VP James Colby commented on what was demonstrated at CTIA 2008 and expects big things from services like mobile social networking.

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.

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.

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.