13th Feb 2006 15:30
Vodafone Group Plc13 February 2006 ORANGE AND VODAFONE TO LINK MOBILE INSTANT MESSAGING COMMUNITIES 13 February 2006, 3GSM World Congress, Barcelona. Orange Group and VodafoneGroup ("the companies") today announced they are finalising an agreement to bethe first multi-national mobile operators to launch Instant Messaginginteroperability, with the intention to link Instant Messaging communities usingthe familiar "calling party pays" principle. Working under the open standard interoperability principles, established by theGSM Association, Orange and Vodafone customers will be able to send and receiveInstant Messages to friends and family seamlessly across each others' mobilenetworks. "As we have seen over the last few years, service interoperability has unlockedthe true potential for mobile. While we, as mobile operators, need to compete atthe retail level, we must also continue to work together at the serviceinteroperability level in order to stimulate customer demand and to continue togrow our industry," said Arun Sarin, Chief Executive at Vodafone. "With thesupport of the GSM Association, we hope to encourage all mobile operators toadopt this open, interoperable approach to instant messaging services, to ensureour customers benefit from seamless services in an environment they trust." The companies are actively seeking engagement from other mobile operators andISPs to adopt the same open standard approach, in order to stimulate customerdemand and drive the continued success of mobile messaging services. To date,the companies have received support and interest from China Mobile, O2 UK,Telefonica Movile Espana, T-Mobile International and Turkcell. "Like Vodafone, we're very supportive of the GSMA principles which aim to makemobile/ personal Instant Messaging accessible, interoperable, safe and secure.We also fully support the wider work that the GSMA is undertaking on IPinterworking. "We're really excited about the potential of IM and building on the alreadyproven success of text-based conversation as evidenced by the phenomenal growthof SMS over mobile and IM on PCs. Initially, we think it will be the youthmarket who will find mobile IM appealing but we expect it to be adopted by amuch wider audience over time," comments Sanjiv Ahuja, CEO, Orange Group. ends Notes to Editors Orange has already launched its own mobile messaging service, Orange Messenger,in France with further launches planned later in the year in the UK, Romania andthe Netherlands. It will also launch a converged Instant Messaging service thatwill be common to both Orange and Wanadoo customers. Access to Orange Messengerwill be simple and easy for customers to use as they will have a single buddylist, one set of contacts and the same look and feel whether they are accessingthe service via PC or mobile. Vodafone has its own mobile instant messaging service, called VodafoneMessenger, which is currently available in 11 countries. In addition, in twocountries Vodafone offers a converged Vodafone Messenger service, through theprovision of a PC client version of Vodafone Messenger. In June 2005, Vodafoneand MSN announced an agreement, to enable seamless instant messaging between MSNPC users and Vodafone Messenger customers. For further information Orange VodafonePress Office Media RelationsTel: + 44 870 990 5436 Tel: +44 (0)1635 664444 Investor Relations Tel: +44 (0)1635 664447 About Orange Orange and wirefree and any other Orange product or service names included inthis material are trademarks of Orange PCS. The Orange group is one of theworld's largest mobile communications companies and a subsidiary of the FranceTelecom group, with operations in 17 countries across Europe and beyond. Withinthe Orange group, the Orange brand operates in the UK, France, Poland,Switzerland, Romania, Slovakia, Thailand, the Ivory Coast, the DominicanRepublic, Cameroon, the Netherlands, Botswana, and Madagascar. The Orange groupalso has controlled operations in Belgium (Mobistar), a joint controllinginterest in Egypt (MobiNil) and minority interests in Portugal (Optimus) andAustria (One). As at the end of September 2005, Orange had 14.5 million activecustomers in the UK, and over 21.67 million registered customers in France. Asat the end of September 2005 (excluding 9.1 million customers in Poland) Orangecontrolled companies had over 57.9 million customers worldwide. Orange, alongwith TIM, Telephonic and T-Mobile, is a founding member of the Free Movealliance. Further information about Orange can be found on the Orange website atwww.orange.com. About Vodafone Vodafone provides a full range of mobile telecommunications services, includingvoice and data communications. Vodafone has equity interests in 27 countries andPartner Networks in a further 31 countries, with a proportionate customer baseof over 179 million. For more information, please visit www.vodafone.com (c) Vodafone Group 2006. VODAFONE and the Vodafone logos are trade marks of theVodafone Group. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be thetrade marks of their respective owners. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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