Colibria Interconnects MTS Mobile Instant Messaging with Megafon and Beeline
Colibria, in partnership with Acision, the world's leading messaging company, today announced that it has enabled Russia's largest operator, MTS, , to interconnect its 'Chat' Mobile Instant Messenger (MIM) service with MegaFon and VimpelCom (which operates under the Beeline trademark). This allows subscribers of the three operators to seamlessly exchange messages across their respective services. The new service, which will be jointly branded as 'Chat' across all three networks, builds on year-on-year growth in messaging for MTS since 2008. This trend is expected to continue by the expansion of messaging access across Russian subscriber communities.
As messaging popularity continues to grow in Russia, with an estimated 20 million IM users in the country, MTS has invested in promoting the service with above-the-line TV advertising, which has consequently seen peer-to-peer IM usage quadruple during the campaign. There are now thousands of chat rooms in use across the 'Chat' service, with mobile users benefiting from a conversational messaging experience that allows them to share pictures, voice and video, all within the same application.
The MTS 'Chat' service is powered by Acision's Instant Messaging solution, which combines the Acision Person to Person Gateway with core elements from Colibria's award-winning product portfolio - including the state of the art Instant Messaging and Presence Service (IMPS). Acision's Instant Messaging solution provides seamless integration between mobile instant messaging and SMS.
Keith Gibson, CEO for Colibria, commented, "Mobile subscribers do not care for operator-imposed boundaries that prevent them communicating with their friends. They want to be able to access and interact with the wider community, regardless of their service provider. This announcement demonstrates how the industry is working together to ensure interoperability for existing and new generation messaging services, to deliver the best possible services to subscribers."
Pavel Roitberg Product Director at MTS added, "We knew that for our messaging service to continue its successful growth in Russia, we had to ensure that all our mobile subscribers had the ability to access it. This new interconnect agreement will enable subscribers to communicate easily with their friends and colleagues across the Megafon and Beeline networks using the 'Chat' messaging service."
Tony Morrish, General Manager for Europe, Russia and Africa at Acision, said, "Interconnection between operators within countries is a key step in providing the ability to communicate seamlessly, offering exciting communication experiences for subscribers. As leaders in messaging, Acision and Colibria have gained valuable insight into the best ways to ensure ongoing messaging revenue growth by working together on the development of services such as this." About Colibria Colibria is the leading global provider of new generation messaging and social networking solutions. Colibria's award-winning technology enables operators and service providers to deploy enhanced messaging services in order to differentiate their services and to unlock new revenue streams. Colibria's innovative product portfolio provides highly scalable and modular solutions for the deployment, expansion and evolution of enhanced messaging, rich profiling and social networking services.
NB: Largest Russian carriers offer IM-service «Chat» - the first joint product of «the great three»
