GrameenPhone Selects Kirusa to Enable Subscribers in South Asia to Send SMS Messages with Their Voice
DHAKA, BANGLADESH, and EDISON, N.J. - GrameenPhone Ltd., a mobile telecom operator in Bangladesh, launched the Voice SMS service to its customers, based upon patent-pending technology from Kirusa.
The Voice SMS service is available nationwide to all of GrameenPhone's prepaid and postpaid subscribers on all mobile handsets as of the first day of launch. The Voice SMS service allows a user to leave a voice message without having the phone ring (RingFree MessagingSM). The service also provides for sending SMS messages without typing the messages on mobile keypads. A user dials "*" followed by the recipient's phone number, and speaks a short message in the language of his/her choice. The recipient gets an SMS message, and can dial a short code to retrieve the voice message. The recipient can also reply to the Voice SMS message. Several other enhanced features will be available in a forthcoming release.
The Voice SMS service at GrameenPhone is Kirusa's first multimodal deployment in Asia, following closely on heels of Europe's first multimodal deployment in Spain earlier this quarter. To bring the service to market, Kirusa and GrameenPhone have customized Kirusa's innovative KV.SMSTM application to the needs of Bangladesh's mobile users. Kirusa has delivered and deployed the Kirusa Multimodal platform, the Voxpilot Open Media Platform, and the customized KV.SMSTM application in GrameenPhone's data centre in Bangladesh, and has integrated the solution into GrameenPhone's wireless network.
"Mobile phones are all about communicating while on the move. The Voice SMS service provides a convenient and cost effective way for our customers to exchange messages and stay in touch with each other. Millions of our customers who do not like to type, now have the ability to send and reply to SMS messages by speaking, at a low cost", said Shibly Zaman, Deputy General Manager, Market Research and Development, Products and Services at GrameenPhone. "We wanted to build the Voice SMS service using a platform that was robust, standards compliant, that could scale to all our customers, and that could be flexible to add additional services. After extensive testing and evaluation, we find the Kirusa multimodal platform and the KV.SMSTM application to be the most advanced, scalable, and flexible in the market."
"The KV.SMSTM application is an easy to use application that fills the mobile user's unmet need for asynchronous messaging using voice. At the same time, the application generates immediate revenue for mobile carriers with minimal capital expenses, and short deployment cycles", says Damon Miller, Director of Business Development at Kirusa. "As the first adopter of the KV.SMSTM application in Asia, GrameenPhone is a key strategic customer of Kirusa that will accelerate adoption of the Voice SMS Service and other multimodal solutions amongst Asian carriers."