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20th January 2005 - The world’s first mass voting
system to use the same phone number for both text and
voice responses has given a perfect performance during
its debut in Sweden.
Developed by Telsis and operated by Swedish telco TeliaSonera,
the MegaCall system received its trial run in support
of the live television programme Idrottsgalan (Sports
Gala) in which viewers across Sweden vote for their
favourite sporting personality.
For the first time, people were able to use the same
phone number to vote by text message over the Telia
mobile network, or by voice call from any mobile or
land-line telephone.
Supplied by Telsis seven years ago, Telia’s MegaCall
system handles over 100 million premium rate voice calls
a year. Just one month ago, Telsis won a multi-million
euro order to enhance MegaCall to support text and voice
voting to the same number, creating the first service
of its kind anywhere in the world.
“The new SMS service has been wanted for a long
time and will make things easier for television audiences,”
says Hans Hernborn, responsible for telephone and SMS
voting at Sweden’s public television station SVT.
“It will prove its true value when all mobile operators
can use it.”
“Idrottsgalan was very much a trial run but we
were delighted with how MegaCall performed,” said
Telia mass calling product manager Stewe Wahlström.
“We aim to have it fully-enabled by the summer,
well in time for the autumn start of the peak TV viewing
period. People will be able to vote from mobile phones
on any network, and we will be delivering real-time
running vote totals direct to studios, enabling a new-level
of audience interaction.”
Telsis voting solutions like MegaCall let operators
comfortably handle national-scale real-time voting events
that concentrate millions of text votes in just minutes.
Call and text management, winner selection and data
collection are handled centrally while an event management
platform enables customers, such as brands and broadcasters,
to configure and run their own text and voice events
using a conventional Web browser.
The enhancements to MegaCall include the first deployment
in Sweden of the Intelligent SMS Router, the revolutionary
carrier-grade platform developed by Telsis, now firmly
established as the de-facto standard in next-generation
messaging infrastructure. Mobile operators including
members of the Vodafone and T-Mobile groups are already
users and the SMS Router is distributed globally by
Ericsson.
Within MegaCall, SMS Routers receive text votes directly
from the mobile networks over SS7 MAP, avoiding the
SMSC bottlenecks that restrict throughput in legacy
networks.
With its headquarters, research and production site
in the UK, Telsis (www.telsis.com) has sales and support
operations in Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain,
Singapore and Australia. The company offers a range
of carrier-grade infrastructure platforms including
intelligent SMS Routers, IN service control points,
switches, protocol converters and advanced IVR solutions
that support a wide variety of innovative value-added
text and voice services. Telsis products are in use
with major fixed and mobile network operators around
the world.
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