Telefonica O2 Czech Republic Selects Comverse for Mobile ICQ Instant Messaging

Comverse, announced that Telefonica O2 Czech Republic, a Telefonica company, has selected Comverse Mobile Instant Messaging to enable its five million users to enjoy mobile IM with the ICQ community on their mobile handsets.

“We are pleased to be the first operator in the country to introduce Instant Messaging into the mobile environment to responsively meet growing consumer demand,” said Jan Karas, Director for Residential Segment Marketing) at Telefonica O2 Czech Republic. “In order to ensure utmost comfort with the service and maximum ease of use, we are launching the mobile IM service with ICQ, a personal communication tool that is popular with our users, and we are providing the ICQ community an affordable and compelling mobile experience that is strikingly similar to the familiar PC experience.

”Comverse’s presence-enabled Instant Messaging (IM) application supports and enhances a wide range of differentiating communication and content services. Comverse handset clients ensure the best possible PC-like “always-on” user experience with a chat-like interface showing dialogue history, contact presence indication, and multimedia capabilities (picture, audio and video).

"ICQ is pleased to present an online community with a mobile service that allows the users to stay in touch with everybody everywhere,” said Ofer Oved, VP Business Affairs ICQ. “The new mobile service complements the ICQ offering in the Czech Republic, providing a communications, services and content center for an extensive community of nearly two million users."

“Comverse’s leading Mobile IM solution currently powers mobile Instant Messaging for operators around the world, giving tens of millions of users convenient mobile access to wireless operator-based IM as well as to the most popular IM communities,” said Benny Einhorn, President of Comverse EMEA. “The flexible, hosted option benefits operators with quick time to market. The clear roadmap to Comverse Converged IP messaging solution gives operators an edge that ensures that they can continue to meet business and technology needs as they evolve in the converging communications arena.”