Consumer Ecosystems

Roamware Voice SMS keeps Filipino expats close to home

Details
Category: Consumer Ecosystems
12530 views

Our second report this week on the Philippines looks at the problems faced by the huge number of Filipinos based overseas as they try to keep in touch with their friends and families based in their home country. Filipinos based in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait can look forward to low-cost mobile communication resulting from Roamware's new contract with PLDT subsidiary Smart Communications...

Our second report this week on the Philippines looks at the problems faced by the huge number of Filipinos based overseas as they try to keep in touch with their friends and families based in their home country. Filipinos based in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait can look forward to low-cost mobile communication resulting from Roamware's new contract with PLDT subsidiary Smart Communications.

Global roaming and mobile connectivity specialist Roamware is launching its first International Voice Short Message Service (Voice SMS) in partnership with Smart Communications, one of the Philippines' leading wireless services provider. The service will enable Filipinos working away from their country to send low-cost Voice SMS from their mobiles, dramatically cutting the cost of communicating with friends, family and business colleagues back in the Philippines.

SMART subscribers will be able to send a Voice SMS by calling a short code and leaving a voice message and the recipient's international number. An SMS notification is then sent to the recipient containing a number which the recipient calls to listen to the message. The service is initially available to all Smart subscribers based in the Philippines with relatives, family and friends in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Bobby Srinivasan, Roamware's CEO, stresses the pioneering nature of the contract: "The successful installation of Roamware's International Voice SMS with Smart is the first implementation of its kind anywhere in the world. It highlights our commitment to developing and rolling out innovative technology that helps increase average revenue per user (ARPU) for operators and value for consumers...Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will now be able to send and exchange voice messages with family back home who are on the Smart network at a fraction of the cost of making a conventional mobile call."

From Smart's point of view: "The ability to send and receive Voice SMS across international destinations is of huge interest to our mobile subscribers who are on holiday or living and working abroad as it represents the cheapest way to make voice communications on a mobile," comments Danilo J Mojica, SMART Wireless Consumer Division Head. He continued: "Until recently, our mobile users used SMS as the primary means of communication over the network because it is cheaper than voice or Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS)."

Roamware's International Voice SMS presents operators like Smart with a way to increase use of voice and SMS products at a time when SMS price erosion is running at over 20% a year and with MMS prices also being cut by 10% a year. Unlike MMS, Voice SMS works across all handsets and provides operators with a value-added service which is as non-intrusive as SMS, easy to use and appeals to the mass market.

Voice SMS enables mobile users to verbalise emotions and expressions not possible in standard SMS and also provides a low-cost way to communicate without having to engage in a full conversation. Voice SMS is not limited by device language capability and transcends any literacy barrier by allowing people who cannot read or write to send and receive verbal messages using their mobiles.

Today, international SMS and cheap international direct dialling (IDD) products generate high revenues as mobile communication helps people keep in touch when they are away from their home country. Roamware's Interconnect network enables routing and delivery of Voice SMS to international destinations and allows operators to launch services instantly without having to negotiate arrangements with foreign operators or invest in termination infrastructure in participating countries.

* Smart Communications boasts 22.9 million subscribers on its eight-year-old GSM network as of end-September 2006. Of the total subscriber base served, 16.5 million are under the brands Smart Buddy, Smart Gold, addict mobile, addict mobile prepaid, Smart Infinity, Smart Kid, Smart Kid Prepaid and Smart ACeS. The remaining 6.4 million are serviced through subsidiary Filipino Telephone Corporation under the GSM brand Talk ?N Text. Smart is a wholly owned subsidiary of PLDT

More info:



More Articles you may be Interested in...