Telefonica selects OnMobile

Telefonica has selected OnMobile to provide converged value added services for the operator's Movistar Emocion content service for customers in Spain.

OnMobile is improving the ease of use of the Emocion portal and the integration of content capabilities to generate new revenue streams for Movistar by re-inventing the way customers are offered relevant content.

The Emocion service, which was launched in 2001, is Movistar's online portal for entertainment and leisure content, including games, music, images and ringtones, and is accessed by more than 10 percent of Telefonica subscribers a year.

The increasing rise of app stores from providers such as Apple and Google is challenging the market and providing Smartphone customers with high-quality content and better quality of service. To effectively compete with the app stores and provide a converged service for all device types, Telefonica Movistar wanted to make the portal easier to use for both the content providers and all handset users.

The revamped approach will create synergies in existing Mobile, WAP and web initiatives by enabling customers to easily access and find relevant content with personalised recommendations and searching capabilities.

Plans are to launch new functionalities such as speech recognition enabled interactive voice portal platforms, on device portals for feature and Smartphones, unstructured supplementary services data platform, and DSTK solutions to benefit all devices with extensive content options.

OnMobile has also streamlined Movistar's processes by removing complex management tasks, such as the integration with content providers, and allowing the operator to focus on generating revenues by offering new content and services.

OnMobile is also in the process of integrating its Ring Back Tone (RBT) service, which is already deployed with Telefonica, with the Emocion portal. With a range of tools available to communicate with customers, the RBT solution enables subscribers to replace the regular ring tone with a song of their choice or select customised ringback tones for individual callers.

Jorge Gutierrez-Marcet, Digital Services business development Manager at Telefonica said "OnMobile's experience in the market, immeasurable knowledge and hands-on approach has meant that we have increased our time to market objectives when deploying new solutions."

Sumit Sardana, senior director sales at OnMobile said "By working together with Telefonica, we have developed a solution that not only meets the needs of the operator and the content providers themselves but also the end customers. Easy to use with a multitude of features, the converged VAS offering meets a real market need and we look forward to continuing to work with Telefonica on developing this further and on future projects."