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22 January 2004 - OZ Communications, an enabler of
standards-based mobile Instant Messaging and Presence
Services, announced today at the IBC Mobile Instant
Messaging conference in London that T-Mobile USA has
selected OZ’s Mobile IM Gateway to enable the mass-market
launch of existing IM services on mobile devices with
standards-based mobile IM clients. As part of the agreement,
T-Mobile USA has licensed both OZ’s Mobile IM Gateway
and OZ’s mobile IM client solutions.
T-Mobile’s IM service gives subscribers access
to their favorite IM services through OZ’s Mobile
IM Gateway using a single, standards based IM interface
on a new generation of IM capable mobile phones now
offered by T-Mobile USA. These phones are based on the
Open Mobile Alliance specifications for Instant Messaging
and Presence Services (IMPS), formerly known as Wireless
Village. The OZ Mobile IM Gateway has already been deployed
commercially and is in active use by T-Mobile’s
subscribers.
Instant Messaging is one of the most popular means
of communication today with hundreds of millions of
desktop IM users worldwide and billions of IM messages
sent each day. Despite its popularity, PC based Instant
Messaging has generated little or no revenues so far.
Mobile operators are now in a key position to capitalize
on the Instant Messaging craze by giving subscribers
access to existing IM services on IM capable phones,
thereby increasing mobile data traffic.
To successfully deploy mobile IM services, mobile operators
however face a number of challenges, including billing,
customer support interfaces, IM protocol conformance
and overall control of mobile IM services. The OZ Mobile
IM Gateway is designed to address these issues and to
simplify the process of extending existing IM services
to standards-based IM capable mobile phones.
“Mobile Instant Messaging services are a core
part of T-Mobile USA’s service offerings and therefore
we need to carefully select the partners we work with,”
said Joerg Zender, Senior Product Manager for Messaging
Applications at T-Mobile USA. “OZ has proven its
expertise and truly understands our needs when it comes
to mobile IM. The OZ Mobile IM Gateway enables T-Mobile
to effectively bill for mobile IM services and to efficiently
control our subscribers’ mobile IM experience.”
“T-Mobile USA has been very successful at mobilizing
existing IM services to date and it is a privilege to
power the next version of T-Mobile’s IM offering
with our Mobile IM Gateway,” said Skuli Mogensen,
CEO of OZ. “The gateway is a truly unique product
that addresses the challenges mobile operators and IM
providers face when deploying mobile IM services, and
is a result of OZ’s extensive work on mobile IM
standardization.”
The OZ Mobile IM Gateway provides mobile operators
with flexible application-level billing models for mobile
IM, supports both post-paid and pre-paid billing, provides
dynamic IM protocol conversion to proprietary IM protocols
when needed, ensures the efficient use of multiple wireless
transports, and ensures IM services’ compliance
with all different flavors of the OMA IMPS specifications
as well as future revisions. The gateway furthermore
gives mobile operators full control over mobile IM services
through a single operational interface and connection
point to multiple IM providers.
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