Operators’ messaging products stand to receive a new lease of life with Avalanche Mobile’s IMF suite of messaging solutions which provide a range of functions from diversion and prioritization of text messages to protection from spam and control of message delivery.

Avalanche Mobile, a leading global developer of network-based SMS management technologies, announces the launch of its Intelligent Messaging Filter™ suite of IMF Control, IMF Protect, IMF Divert, IMF Append, IMF Optimize, IMF Archive and IMF Priority which enable mobile network operators to meet a range of important subscriber needs, improve the efficiency of their networks and infrastructure and increase revenue. These solutions will be demonstrated by Avalanche Mobile at Hall 4, HS6.08 at 3GSM in Barcelona from February 13 – 16.

For mobile network operators, text messaging is a high margin service with low costs and has proven constant its popularity and growth, typically contributing 15 – 20% of overall revenues. In spite of this, product development is non-existent and the price is static.

The Avalanche IMF solution offers a number services that enable the operator to increase billable events on existing peer-to-peer traffic, increase revenues through new products & services which add a premium to simple text messages, build customer loyalty & brand stickiness and optimize existing SMS infrastructure and reduce costs. Here is an overview of these services:

IMF Control lets parents assume an effective supervisory role for their younger children’s mobile use. The dangers of unsupervised internet and chatroom use have been well documented over the last few years and solutions like NetNanny have been employed by concerned parents and others measures have been incorporated into operating systems like Microsoft Windows. However, parents have had no such options for mobile phone use, and as parents naturally want to keep in touch with their children whenever possible, more and more mobile phones are being given to youngsters. The solution is IMF Control which gives parents the option of monitoring text messages sent and received by their children, blacklisting unsuitable senders and with SMS Deferral, parents can even temporarily suspend the texting function of their child’s phone during school or night hours – while still enabling important messages from themselves or other whitelisted family members to get through.

The IMF Protect solution from Avalanche Mobile uses a set of sophisticated criteria and blocking rules to screen and analyze all text messages in order to prevent unauthorized messages from getting through to subscribers. Such messages could include spam, fraudulent or other nasty messages from other subscribers, service and content providers or other mobile operators. Deployed in the mobile operator’s network IMF Protect handles incoming messages from all of these sources on an item-by-item basis which means that the operator no longer needs to block all traffic from offending sources – legitimate traffic from any source can still get through thereby maintaining service levels for subscribers and maximizing revenue for operators.

Diverting voice calls and emails is a familiar concept to mobile subscribers, but until now they have not been able to do the same with SMS. That poses a problem for various workers, business travelers and subscribers with more than one SIM card, including those migrating from pre-paid to post-paid. IMF Divert solves this problem by enabling operators to divert SMS to another mobile phone number or to email. This type of value-add is extremely useful to a wide range of subscribers and not only increases revenue, but also customer loyalty and conversions from pre- to post-paid.

The store and forward nature of text messaging means that SMS has been an unacceptable solution for time-critical applications such as financial transactions, delivery or flight notifications and much business communication. This has hindered the development of applications of SMS for these markets. From its position in the operator’s network, IMF Priority reduces this problem by bypassing the queue and sending urgent messages for immediately delivery to the handset. If the message cannot be delivered immediately an alert is sent back to the originator and depending on the rules applied, the message is put into the queue for later delivery or immediately cancelled.

IMF Append is an innovative text messaging solution enabling young subscribers to send and receive text messages for free – courtesy of third party sponsorship of micro-advertisements. This appeals to those who have limited budgets but lots of friends to keep in touch with and also to advertisers eager to reach elusive youth markets.

The IMF solutions are installed transparently on layer 2 of the existing SS7 network, and function without interfering with voice and data traffic.

Avalanche Mobile’s Director Global Business, Mr Mark Shiels, said “Operators face a tough challenge in saturated markets where the uptake of new services has been shaky at best, and the bulk of SMS traffic, the one perennially strong performer, is a cheap commodity with little value-add. Avalanche Mobile’s Intelligent Messaging Filter suite changes that, as well as helping operators lower costs on the network side too. These all-round benefits have the potential re-revolutionize text messaging around the world.”

Ruairi Hann, Avalanche Mobile’s Product Manager for the IMF suite, said “The Intelligent Messaging Filter solutions from Avalanche Mobile enable mobile operators to fulfill a range of security, efficiency and peace of mind needs of subscribers using existing infrastructure and based on existing messaging services which they are already very familiar with.”

About Avalanche Mobile
Avalanche Mobile is focused on enabling GSM and 3G network operators to protect, control and grow text messaging usage, applications and revenues by providing the capability for them to create new and manage existing text messaging services and revenue opportunities. With tens of millions of text messages sent worldwide every day, Avalanche Mobile has developed a patent-pending flexible platform that enables network operators to expand offerings and maximize revenue from advanced messaging services.

Avalanche Mobile’s Intelligent Messaging Filterâ„¢ (IMF) platform enables carriers to manage, personalize, prioritize and deliver any messaging service to corporate accounts, service/application providers, and private customers – customized to meet individual user needs. The IMF platform offers a wide range of services for specific purposes including IMF Control, IMF Protect, IMF Divert and IMF Priority which provide capabilities such as priority SMS services for the corporate and consumer market, parental control services, custom SMS and surge SMS management for mass-market consumer events involving public text voting.

Avalanche Mobile’s management team has decades of experience working with Mobile Operators, as well as with the operation of large data networks world-wide. Avalanche Mobile has offices in London, Singapore and Dubai.