London – UK – 13 February 2006: Followap, the leading provider of Instant Messaging and Presence solutions, today announced that it is providing interconnectivity for Vodafone’s Instant Messaging service.
Vodafone Messenger customers can now seamlessly interact with Vodafone Messenger users from other countries, and with other operators. Vodafone customers are identified by their mobile number. Other instant messaging users can also use their mobile phones or their Internet Instant Messaging to interact with Vodafone customers just as they do with any other buddy on their buddy list.
This deployment pioneers the first iteration of Federated interconnectivity in the consumer mobile Messenger marketplace. As in the email world, where an email user can communicate with any other email user without worrying about the networks they are traversing, Federated interconnectivity similarly enables different instant messaging services to send instant messages to each other, regardless of the IM community they belong to.
“Sending an instant message and viewing presence information should be as simple as placing a call, or sending an email or SMS. Just as you can call, email or SMS your contacts, regardless of their service provider or the type of network they use, users of different Instant Messaging services should be able to exchange instant messages and presence information without hindrance,” said Dotan Volach, CEO at Followap. “This is an important step of implementing Federation interconnectivity, thus moving forward the process of establishing presence and IM interoperability between service providers of all kinds.”
Presence technology indicates the availability and willingness of a user to communicate, and currently is most commonly used in instant messaging applications. Followap’s iFollow Interconnect Platform (“ICP”) enables federated interconnectivity between different real time communication service providers. ICP is a Telco grade solution, fully redundant and designed and built to efficiently support high level of traffic. It includes a highly secured authorisation system and flexible billing mechanisms.
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About Followap
Followap is the leading provider of Presence and Instant Messaging solutions to the telecommunications industry. Pioneering this field, Followap’s customer base consists today of over 15 network operators, many of them tier-one operators, with a combined user base of over 200 million users. Followap’s products enable operators to establish advanced, interoperable presence-enhanced services, whilst also creating the infrastructure for next-generation networks. Followap supports and contributes to industry standardization efforts in forums including OMA, IETF, 3GPP and the GSM Association.For additional information please visit Followap’s web site at https://followap.com.
About Vodafone
Vodafone is a trade mark of the Vodafone Group. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trade marks of their respective owners.