Colibria and Followap Announce Personal IM Interconnectivity Testing

Colibria and Followap, leaders in mobile Instant Messaging (IM) and Presence solutions, engage in interconnectivity testing to support the GSM Association’s Personal IM (PIM) initiative.

Colibria and Followap today announced that they are testing Followap’s Interconnect Hub and Colibria’s PIM Interconnect Manager for interconnectivity. IM interconnect is a key part of the GSM Association’s Personal IM (PIM) initiative, and the companies’ testing is based on the GSM Association’s Use Cases for Personal IM. The resulting protocol self-certification will be a further step towards global interoperability for Personal IM. Operators launching their own-branded IM services can choose to interconnect with other operators, and provide subscribers with value-add services by enabling communication with other IM communities.

Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer of the GSM Association, commented:
"The GSM Association’s Personal IM campaign is focused on building a global community of mobile IM users, by ensuring that all operators’ personal IM services can easily interoperate with each other. The GSM Association has produced implementation guidelines, which are being used by the vendors to test and self-certify that the interconnectivity protocols can be used to implement the required Use Cases. The commitment from Followap and Colibria to ensure interconnectivity is essential for operators wishing to build on the success of SMS by launching Personal IM services."

Keith Gibson, Colibria’s CEO, also commented:
"It is only by demonstrating interconnectivity to this degree that operators will feel confident in implementing Personal IM. This is key to developing IM into as powerful a market force as SMS. By following the GSM Association’s recommendations on service alignment and interoperability, operators are playing their part in ensuring Mobile IM becomes a global, ubiquitous phenomenon. Operators deploying either Colibria’s or Followap’s solutions can be assured that their respective services will work across each other’s networks, representing a significant step forward in realising the GSM Association’s Personal IM initiative – Colibria is proud to be involved in the Mobile IM Interconnect project, in support of the GSM Association."

Nir Yamin, Director of Interconnect Hub at Followap said:
"Interconnectivity is the catalyst for the global adoption of mobile IM by subscribers worldwide. By interconnecting, operators can retain subscribers and brand ownership, as well as provide added service value by enabling instant messages to be exchanged regardless of operator network, just like SMS. We are happy to be extending our established Interconnect reach to service providers. The testing programme carried out with Colibria builds upon our success with interconnectivity of national operators, groups, and Internet IM communities."

Through implementing Personal IM, operators have the opportunity to capitalise on their existing SMS communities, by offering new value-added IM services to an already captive audience. The operator can build on the success of SMS, to reduce churn, strengthen the brand and develop their own services, as opposed to being simply a bit-pipe for existing Internet IM communities. SMS Continuity enables operators to create communities based on inter-working SMS and IM – this allows the delivery of instant messages using SMS, if the recipient is not equipped with an IM Client.

This announcement comes against the backdrop of the 3GSM World Congress Asia (Singapore 16-20th October 2006), and the GSM Association’s Personal IM Seminar at the Congress. Colibria and Followap are both presenting at the Seminar (Monday 16th October, 14:00 to 17:00) and are demonstrating their solutions at the 3GSM Asia exhibition (16th - 18th October), which runs in parallel with the Congress. Colibria is exhibiting on stands C16 and IM03, and Followap on stand IM01 in Hall 602.

About Colibria
Colibria is a leading international player in the field of Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) and Presence solutions, operating from its global headquarters in Norway, and locations in the UK, Belgium, Spain, Singapore and the Philippines. The company was established in 2000, and today employs more than 80 staff around the world. Colibria has a global customer base of mobile operators in Europe, Asia and Latin America, as well as working extensively with leading systems integrators – strategic partners include LogicaCMG, Lucent Technologies, Nokia, and Motorola.

Colibria’s IM and Presence platform provides an end-to-end solution, from innovative handset clients through to advanced server technology. The addition of Colibria’s PIM Interconnect Manager delivers the vital infrastructure for advanced presence, messaging and multimedia services. Focused on ensuring interoperability between devices, platforms and operators, Colibria’s IMPS and SIP/IMS test server facilities are now the de facto standard for product and service trials, with users in over 30 countries around the world, including service providers, handset suppliers, software developers and operators. Colibria is an active participant in the international standards arena, contributing extensively to the OMA IMPS forum as a member of the Open Mobile Alliance, as well as the GSM Association. It is also a founding member of the COMET alliance, a global consortium committed to the delivery of end-to-end converged messaging solutions.

About Followap
Followap is the leading provider and an innovator of Presence, Instant Messaging and Interconnect solutions to the telecommunications industry. Pioneering this field, Followap’s customer base consists today of over 25 network operators, with a combined user base of over 300 million subscribers. Followap’s products were first launched in 2000 and are designed especially for the operator, enabling advanced, interoperable presence-enhanced services, whilst also creating the infrastructure for next-generation networks. Followap contributes to industry standardisation efforts in forums including OMA, IETF, 3GPP and the GSM Association. Followap has local offices to operators worldwide, in Europe, the US and Asia, and employs 170 staff.

Followap’s Interconnect Hub is a global solution dedicated to IM and Presence interconnectivity hubbing. Based on the iFollow ICP (Interconnect Platform), it supports all interconnectivity protocols (IMPS SSP, SIP SIMPLE, XMPP), provides inter-operator billing and clearing tools, supports operators’ interconnect agreement structure and can be provided as a service or as an on-site platform (both modes of operation are currently in production).

The iFollow IMSC (IM Service Centre) is robust, powerful, highly scalable and fully compliant to OMA IMPS specifications and has been rolled out to some of the largest operator networks world-wide. Followap’s carrier-grade iFollow IMSC was used to create the first commercially successful operator-branded IM services.

About the GSM Association
For more information on the GSM Association, please see: www.gsmworld.com.

For more information, please contact:

Liv Anne Løkka
Colibria AS
Strandveien 15
Postboks 255
1326 Lysaker
Norway
Tel: + 47 67 11 35 00
Fax: + 47 67 11 35 01
Email: lokka@colibria.com
Web: www.colibria.com

Georgina Garrett/Simon Jones
Garrett Axford
Harbour House
27 High Street
Shoreham by Sea
West Sussex
BN43 5DD, UK
Tel: +44 1273 441200
Fax: +44 1273 441300
Email: mail@garrett-axford.co.uk
Web: www.garrett-axford.co.uk