Operators which a few years ago had no interest in using the cell broadcast channel to push live updates to mobile phones, have changed their minds, according to Ran Wellingstein, Celltick’s vp Marketing.
Wellingstein said that operators were coming around to the idea of using the cell broadcast to push targeted information to users, using the real estate of the idle screen to prompt access to data and content services.
“Around about 2001 to 2002 we got some weird answers from Western European operators,” Wellingstein said, “But now we are seeing a 180° turn. From ‘it’s not going to work’, Vodafone now was its Livecast service and other operators are looking at similar solutions.”
Although Vodafone built its Livecast technology in-house, rather than use Celltick’s cell broadcast technology, the service had raised the profile of cell broadcast, Wellingsein said.
Celltick’s Active Content Discovery helps users “promotes” content from operators’ “huge content catalogue” Wellingstein said.
The technology works by “learning” a user’s habits, sending only alerts it thinks the user is interested in. In fact, all alerts are sent to all mobiles in a cell, as it is a broadcast technology. But the client on the handset suppresses that alert from appearing on the uesr’s screen if if it not likely to be of interest to the user. Promoting content like this means operators are not reliant on users being able to find content on increasingly deep and busy portals.
One of Celltick’s bigger customers to date has been Vimpelcom, which launched the service in April 2005, and by the first quarter of 2006 had supported 15 million download transactions, and is seeing 20-30% of users access content once a month, compared to a European average of 8-9%.
Victor Markelov, product director, Vimpelcom said, “We put very high priority and have great expectation from our collaboration with Celltick. Chameleon enables us to distribute mobile content rapidly and efficiently. It builds completely new concept of content services delivery and makes it easier for users to receive information or media content they are interested in. It has really great potential.”