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ECT
Telecom latest market news
The European Computer Telecoms Group provides the
technology for Ringuppsignaler, Tele2/Comviq’s
new ring back tone service.
Using a customized solution from ECT, Tele2/Comviq
becomes the first company in Scandinavia to offer
its customers ring back tone service.
Stockholm, Munich, 10st August 2004 – The
European Computer Telecoms Group (ECT), Europe’s
market leader for intelligent value-added services,
has provided a turnkey solution for ring back tone
service to the Tele2 Group, Europe’s leading
alternative telecommunications supplier of fixed-line
and mobile telephony solutions. ECT thus brings
its new solution to Scandinavia after successful
implementations in Germany and China. In a competitive
bidding process, ECT was recently awarded the contract
for Tele2’s new product, Ringuppsignaler.
With its extensive experience in ring back tone
projects, ECT was able to provide Tele2 customised
user and network interfaces with the shortest possible
time-to-market and highest possible cost-efficiency.
“I am pleased that our long-time partner,
the Tele2 Group, has now also joined the ranks of
major mobile operators utilizing our solution for
ring back tone service,” said Dr. Marshall
E. Kavesh, the ECT Group’s CEO.
Ring back tone is a completely new type of entertainment
service for mobile phones that has proven to be
very profitable in Asia and other countries. Now
Tele2/Comviq is the first mobile carrier in Scandinavia
to offer its customers ring back tones, both tapping
new revenue streams and further differentiating
its mobile services from the competition. The new
service can be seen at www.comviq.se.
With the ECT Ring Back Tone Service, mobile customers
can choose various songs, jokes or other sounds
played to the person who calls them at the same
time as they hear the familiar ring back tone. The
service works regardless of who calls. Anyone who
is a Tele2/Comviq mobile subscriber or has a mobile
calling card can use the service.
The ECT Ring Back Tone Service allows operators
to market the service together with one or several
content providers, who by own-branded web portals
serve as indirect sales channels and contribute
to the commercial success of the new service. The
mobile-user can set the ring back tones based on
the person calling as well as the time of day and
date. Subscribers can buy and configure their personalised
ring back tone over a wide variety of user interfaces,
including the Internet, WAP, interactive voice response
(IVR), and SMS.
The ECT Group offers an easily customized and scalable
solution for the ring back tone service, having
realized several successful projects with major
carriers across Europe, including Vodafone D2 in
Germany. The solution includes network interfaces
for post-paid and prepaid billing and provisioning,
a statistics package as well as a content provider
interface.
“For over five years,
the Tele2 Group has utilized our technology, including
the AutoCarrier® Softswitch and INtellECT®
Intelligent Network, to realize value-added services
across Europe,” said ECT CEO and company co-founder,
Dr. Marshall E. Kavesh, “With the new ring
back tone service, we are particularly proud to
have the opportunity to further contribute to Tele2’s
cost advantages and innovative product portfolio.”
Background information on the Ring
Back Tone service
The traditional ring back tone is the tone heard
by someone who calls your telephone number. The
ECT Ring Back Tone Service allows mobile subscribers
to replace this standard tone with a personalised
sound file. The mobile subscriber can assign different
ring back tones to different callers or group of
callers, even dependent upon the date, weekday and/or
time. The personalised ring back tone can be a pop
song purchased over a portal, a message recorded
by the subscriber, a corporate advertisement, a
joke, etc.
User Interfaces for your Mobile Subscribers: Each
implementation of ECT Ring Back Tone Service generally
includes four customised user interfaces for the
administration of the service by the mobile subscriber:
telephone interface via interactive voice response
(IVR), a web portal, a WAP portal and an SMS interface.
Interfaces to Content Providers: The customised
web portal provided by ECT offers content providers
an open data interface for the uploading of ring
back tones, definition of ring back tone group,
pricing of ring back tones, downloading of event
tickets and statistics, etc. You can make this interface
available to external providers also delivering
content or reserve this interface for your internal
use.
There are three different architectures to realise
this service: The AutoCarrier® Softswitch in
a central or a de-central service node architecture
with tromboning, without tromboning using the call
drop back feature in the Mobile-Switching-Center
(MSC) or in an Intelligent Network Architecture
with the INtellECT® Service Control Point and
AutoCarrier® Communications Servers as Intelligent
Peripherals.
The complete turnkey solution of the ECT Group contains
the following components:
Customised AutoCarrier® Data Warehousing and
Separate File Server, e.g. for library of ring back
tones, subscriber data, transaction-based records,
call data records, statistics, etc.
Customised interfaces from the AutoCarrier®
Data Warehousing to your Customer Care System and
billing databases as well as to content providers.
Customised user interfaces and front ends for the
administration and usage of the system by the subscriber,
e.g. SMS, interactive voice response (IVR), WAP,
GPRS PDA, mobile handset JAVA applets and web interfaces.
About Tele2
Tele2Comviq’s business offering is mobile
telephony. Tele2Comviq’s business idea is
a simple one: to make mobile telephony available
to as many people as possible at a price that is
as low as possible. Today Tele2/Comviq is one of
Sweden’s leading GSM carriers. Tele2Comviq’s
GSM network provides our customers with one of the
most comprehensive range of services in the world.
Our aim is to always be able to offer our customers
sophisticated services at a fair price. Tele2/Comviq
belongs to Tele2 AB, which was established in 1993.
Tele2 AB is listed at the Stockholm Stock Exchange
and at NASDAQ.
Tele2 AB, formed in 1993, is the leading alternative
pan-European telecommunications company offering
fixed and mobile telephony, data network and Internet
services under the brands Tele2, Tango and Comviq
to over 23 million people in 24 countries. Tele2
operates Datametrix, which specializes in systems
integration, 3C Communications, providing integrated
credit card processing, web payment solutions and
public payphones; Transac, providing billing and
transaction processing service; C3, offering co-branded
pre-paid calling cards and Optimal Telecom, the
price-guaranteed residential router device. The
Group offers cable television services and, together
with MTG, owns the Internet portal Everyday.com.
The Company is listed on the Stockholmsbörsen,
under TEL2A and TEL2B, and on the Nasdaq Stock Market
under TLTOA and TLTOB. www.comviq.se
About the European Computer Telecoms
Group
The European Computer Telecoms Group, or ECT for
short, was established in Munich, Germany in 1998,
shortly after the German telecommunications market
was liberalised. Today ECT encompasses the mother
company European Computer Telecoms AG as well as
the European Computer Telecoms Ltd. in London and
the ECT Vertriebs- and Servicegesellschaft mbH in
Munich. In addition, there are registered ECT Sales
and Service Centres in Paris, Strasbourg, The Hague,
Warsaw and Vienna. ECT is also affiliated with Interactive
Technologies Holdings Limited in Hong Kong and has
a direct sales and service presence in Hong Kong,
Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur
and Manila.
ECT enables highly profitable value-added services
via software applications running on its own complete
line of open platforms for public switching, service
nodes, intelligent networks, intelligent peripherals
and next-generation networks based on the Internet
Protocol (IP). ECT’s mobile value-added services,
e.g. Ring Back Tone Service, Prepaid Mobile and
Number Portability, are utilized by major mobile
carriers, such as Vodafone D2, Tele2, TeliaSonera,
Omnitel, the Saunalahti Group, Radiolinja and Hutchison.
ECT's fixed-line customers include major incumbents,
such as BT, Deutsche Telekom and TeliaSonera, as
well as alternative carriers, such as Tele2, Completel,
Telewest and Versatel. ECT value-added services
are also to be found at major Internet service providers,
such as the United Internet AG, as well as larger
providers of prepaid calling cards and services,
such as Alpha Telecom, the Calling Card Company
Ltd., Central Telecom and Mox Telecom. In the recently
liberalized markets of Eastern Europe, ECT also
provides cost-efficient and low-maintenance public
switching with interconnection. In the Czech Republic,
for instance, ECT has equipped virtually all the
alternative carriers including PragoNet, the local
subsidiary of the Deutsche Telekom Group.
ECT has developed a large family of applications
for value-added services, such as fixed-line and
mobile number portability, service numbers with
televoting and network-based call centre functionality,
ring back tone service, prepaid mobile, teleconferencing
services, personal number services, and prepaid
calling cards. Additional service applications are
introduced on a regular basis, all of which run
on both the ECT AutoCarrier® and INtellECT®
platforms. The AutoCarrier® is a class 4 softswitch
that can be utilised for both interconnection to
the public telephone network as well as intelligent
value-added services. Via its INtellECT® Service
Control Point, ECT realises intelligent networks
with the Intelligent Network Application Protocol
(INAP) CS1 and CS2. |
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