Aicent enable Three UK to send more MMS messages
If you haven’t come across Aicent in your travels, they’re a godsend. They’re the people who connect about a billion mobile users to each other.
Most mobile operators are pretty poor at arranging interconnects with each other. Sure, they’ll usually be able to knock-up some kind of sticky-tape interconnect with their local players, but when it comes to peering with international operators, it can start to get a little complicated when there’s perhaps four major operators in each country.
Aicent act as middleman, so if you’ve got an agreement with them, then your customers typically have the ability to transparently roam and transmit messages to other customers using other operators who also have agreements with Acient.
Here’s the science-bit… (from the recent press release)
To enable mobile data roaming and interoperability between Aicent customers and other networks, Aicent operates one of world’s largest GPRS and 3G network and data application exchanges, connecting to over 100 operators, including four of the world’s five largest. Through extensive peering arrangements, the Aicent network reaches nearly all GPRS/3G operators around the world.
They’ve just recently signed up Three UK — good news, because that means I can now transmit large, content-rich multimedia messages (think the latest show-off video from my N95) to customers using over 600 operators worldwide. That’s a heck-of-a-lot-of people. Well, it’s over a billion.
Why this is a godsend — two key points:
1. It means that I can now send a picture message to my friend abroad — and know that, generally, it’s going to arrive properly, rather than some awful ‘Hi, you’ve received a picture message’ text message which forces the receiver to have to arse about with his/her home computer to view it.
2. When I am abroad, my phone will work. I’m not necessarily worried — initially — about the roaming cost. I just want it to work, properly. Once I’ve got a signal and the ability to ET-phone-home in an emergency, or, avoid having to wash the dishes at the hotel for a week by being able to call my bank if there’s a problem with my credit cards — then, then I’ll worry about cost.
Meanwhile, did you know that..
“3’s customers in the UK generate one of the highest MMS message volume per subscriber in the industry,” said Adil Pastakia, Aicent’s general manager for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. “With Aicent MMS Gateway, they can now send messages to millions more people all over the world.”
I suppose I could have guessed — because Three really have made picture messaging and the whole shebang very easy nationally.
And as for Three, what are they saying?
“We are the leader in the convergence of communications, entertainment and information services for customers on the move,” said David Cooper, CTO of 3 UK. “As MMS traffic continues to grow and customers’ expectations increase we need to ensure their ability to send MMS to friends, family and colleagues anywhere in the world. With Aicent we have the best solution in the market.”
Kudos to David for sorting out Acient and, by the way, for being CTO of one of the coolest mobile operators around. Three definitely are continuing to meet and extend my expectations.
Update: For a short time, I was linking to www.ancient.com instead of Aicent…….. heh. Ok, so I was blogging on the tube, right? My fingers slipped on to the ‘n’ when we went over an unexpected bump!
