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    Doing more with messaging

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    Avalanche Mobile is one of those companies which might best be described as disruptive. It combines a measure of disdain for its competitors with enthusiasm for its own reflection in the mirror. But it is difficult to argue with the logic. Which is as follows.

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    Wouldn’t it be good, Avalanche says, if you could do more with the SMS?
    It wouldn’t hurt to be able to look at SMS coming into and going across your network and give certain messages priority — making sure that business critical SMS, for example, always got through quicker — and then charge the user for that.
    It would also be half useful when television programmes are generating surges in message flows, to be able to manage those message flows, load balance them across the messaging infrastructure, re-writing the SMSC destination rather than merely forwarding on the the nearest one. Perhaps an operator would like to be able to attach adverts to a message on the fly, after a user has bought into a package of sponsored messages or likewise. Might it even be useful to be able to send a parent all the messages intended for their child, before the child gets it? And then charge the user for that, creating two billable events where previously there was only one.
    Avalanche says it can help operators do this with the introduction of a new network element that sits between and edge SMSC and the core SMSC. This element employs what Avalanche calls a transparent SS7 stack, which means that it is able to inspect the sender, route, recipient etc of each message using SS7, providing real time analytics.
    Offering service like this make the IntelligentText engine different from SMS routers such as those being profitably sold by Telsis. These edge routers, “offload boxes” as Avalanche terms them, are attracting attention because they let an operator re-route messages across an IP backbone without having them queue at a possible SMSC bottleneck. Avalanche says it is different because rather than merely “offloading” the messages it adds value to the messages coming through the switch.
    It claims that in the case of priority for business users, a premium of EUR0.06 per message could results in incremental ARPU of EUR11.20 per month.
    Managing director Jan Olsen, a veteran of several European mobile operators, said, “Most big operators throw a truckload of equipment at the problem of over-whelmed SMSCs and invest in more and more SMScs. We think that doesn’t enhance the data stream with any intelligence.
    “IntelligentText is an element sitting in the mobile operator environment built on a transparent SS7 stack, which means we are able to see and process all different kind of messages and do interesting things with them.”
    Marc Hanson, cto said, “The engine sits in the SS7 network and the key is it is transparent. There is no point code and it is invisible in the network and can be put in without changing existing configurations.”
    Avalanche claims to have the product simultaneously testing with four operators in one European market. It has just made its formal launch, having received $4 million series A venture capital funding in the summer of 2003.