Comverse Presents Range of Mobile Communication Innovations at Mobile World Congress

At Mobile World Congress (News - Alert), Comverse will showcase a range of mobile communication innovations that infuse current products and services, such as messaging, mobile Internet, billing and customer management, with new dimensions to transform the end-user experience. At the same time, Comverse (News - Alert) is expanding telecom’s future to provide new revenue opportunities, including some that can leverage information from billions of networked sensors around the globe.

In a release, Daphna Steinmetz, chief innovation officer at Comverse said, “With mobile communication expanding to cater to the Internet-nurtured user, Comverse empowers users to intensify relationships and connect new worlds. Today’s technologies allow us to expand the communication experience to involve more senses, to be sensitive to people’s communication needs, and to understand the communication style they wish to use at any given moment that is silent, visual, or vocal on any telecom device.”

Comverse is the world's leading supplier of software and systems enabling value-added messaging and content services, converged billing and active customer management, and IP communications.

On a continual basis, Comverse enhances a wide range of products and services in its two core business areas – Business Support Systems (BSS), which includes billing and customer relationship management, and Value-added Services (VAS) – to integrate an individual’s context, or environment, into the communication experience for deeper – and more meaningful – interactions. These same benefits also can help operators reap more revenues and lower operating costs.

One example is the natural connection among billing, customer management and mobile advertising, which can involve prepaid mobile subscribers receiving free text messages or airtime minutes if they agree to receive ads when their accounts are depleted.

“The objective of our innovation efforts is making networks smarter to make the lives of end users better, while lowering operating expenses and boosting profits for telecom carriers,” Steinmetz said. “Enhancing the user experience with context and multi-sensual experiences revolutionizes the model of information consumption by letting media find the user rather than the user finding the media. This tactic also creates new ways for people to socialize on the go.”

One approach, labeled “social augmented reality” by Steinmetz and her colleagues, captures different types of media from different sources and augments them at the mobile phone screen for a richer, and more insightful, experience that can help improve personal and business socializing.

For instance, when a woman points a phone’s camera at a male friend, he is automatically recognized. Bits of information about him are augmented from all over the Internet and presented on the woman’s handset screen, along with his image. The augmented information may be visuals or texts, such as an updated Facebook (News - Alert) profile, Twitter status or recent Flickr images, together with on-screen controls to send a message with a single click, without any need to delve into mobile browser options and application menus.

“This adds new dimensions to connections between people by allowing them to provide immediate, yet selective connectivity and access to their social profiles and online data,” Steinmetz said. “This might be regarded as a modern version of the traditional paper business card.”

Also at Mobile World Congress, Comverse puts a new twist on mobile advertising, with users endorsing products by replacing a model’s image in a mobile ad with their own image and sending it to their contact lists. In this example, imaging algorithms combine with multimedia messaging to create a new approach to advertising campaigns, which is personal, fun, engaging, and thus, more effective.

Looking toward the future, Comverse is aiming to expand the frontiers of the telecom business in the consumer and enterprise segments. The rapidly growing machine-to-machine (M2M) communications arena is finally coming of age and can leverage the mobile Internet and billions of miniscule sensors to provide new consumer and enterprise revenue opportunities, such as telemetry (remote meter reading), family security and home management, and fleet management.

The enterprise environment offers an additional fresh arena for mobile operators. Joining forces with enterprise software vendors, innovative management tools give businesses powerful new abilities to configure and manage corporate communications and applications in the way best suited to their evolving on-the-go needs.

“For three decades, Comverse has been blending creativity with emerging market trends and next-generation technologies to advance the experience for users and improve business results for telecom service providers,” Steinmetz said. “At Mobile World Congress, we look forward to sharing innovative ideas that will help operators thrive in our increasingly open and connected world.”

Visitors to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (Feb. 15 to 18) are invited to meet Comverse experts in Hall 8 Booth B83 to experience the wide range of Comverse products and services. To schedule a meeting with Comverse, visitors are encouraged to make an online request.

At the Mobile World Congress 2010, read here that Hans Vestberg (News - Alert), president and CEO of Ericsson, said the company is expecting robust growth in 2010, stemming mainly from the upgrading of carriers’ mobile networks to Long Term Evolution wireless technology.