Expert View

October 23, 2002
MMS at the center of next-generation offering: Comverse

Rajendra Prabhu

UNITED STATES -- Comverse, a world leader in value-added services (VAS) software and hardware for telecom networks, has made a huge splash in the Indian market with an agreement to supply VAS systems for Reliance's CDMA mobile service. The company is also a major supplier of voice recognition and multimedia messaging. Pushpendra Mankad, managing director, India operations, Comverse, says that the company's product portfolio could work with next-generation GPRS and CDMA2000 platforms. Convergence Plus caught up with Mankad during a recent visit of this journalist to the company's facilities in United States. Excerpts from an interview:

CP: What is the role of Comverse in the expanding telecom market in India?
Pushpendra Mankad: Comverse is basically engaged in providing value-added service (VAS) platforms, both hardware and software, for mobile and fixed telecom networks. These value-added services provide value to the user by enhancing personal communication capabilities. Generally, VAS constitutes 4 percent to 5 percent of the operators' revenue.

CP: Are your products compatible with GSM and CDMA platforms?
Pushpendra Mankad: Comverse's product portfolio is fully compatible with GSM and CDMA. Moreover, our product and services are also compliant with next-generation of these networks such as GPRS and CDMA2000. In fact, they are more than just compatible. They have been successfully deployed in the environments with more than 400 operators worldwide. Beyond this, Comverse's MMS was recently deployed on a live 3G UMTS network in Korea with KTI COM during the World Cup 2002.

CP: Has Comverse any role in the fixed line telephony also?

Pushpendra Mankad: Comverse has long-time experience with wireline operators. Telecom Italia, KPN (Holland), Verizon, SBC, AT&T, Bell Canada, Telenor, Deutsche Telecom, etc., are just a few examples of wireline operators running Comverse's services worldwide, like 140 other wireline operators. At Comverse, our vision for wireline operators is to improve the positioning, usage and competitiveness of wireline communications by developing enhanced services that enrich the user experience, moving it from the world of conversation to the world of communication and infotainment.

CP: How does your company operate in India (offices, customer relationship, some of the major customers, benefits to customers, etc.)?

Pushpendra Mankad: Comverse Network System India Pvt Ltd is a wholly owned Indian subsidiary of Comverse USA. A board manages it and I am heading it as the managing director. The company is fully geared up to support customers in India and the South Asian region.

CP: Are there plans to invest in R&D in India for your future products?
Pushpendra Mankad: Since the beginning of its activities in India, Comverse has established R&D facilities in India to support its operation and ensure timely delivery. As the Indian market grows, Comverse continuously evaluates its R&D policy to ensure proper support for its growing business in India.

CP: Do you expect a larger role for your company as the networks move from 2G to 2.5G and then on to 3G?
Pushpendra Mankad: VAS and messaging are our core businesses, and for us, in moving from 2G to 2.5G and 3G applications, we see MMS at the center of our next-generation offering. In fact, we have started to launch MMS in Europe and recently [September 16], very successfully with Bouygues in France, supported by our Push Proxy WAP gateway in place at Bouygues for the last one-and-a-half years. Comverse's MMS enables about 200,000 of Bouygues' customers -- who are WAP users -- to benefit from advanced Internet applications on their mobile phones. Comverse's MMSC is based on an open IP platform with modular and scalable architecture, reliable and efficient design, and rich message handling capabilities.

With performance as its highest design priority, Comverse's MMSC provides the high level of capacity, reliability, scalability, security and redundancy necessary to ensure smooth operation. In addition, Comverse recognizes that MMS service requires a large degree of customisation and adaptation to accommodate network operator requirements. Therefore, flexibility and customisation capabilities -- for example, in terms of service deployment and billing-- were central design considerations for our MMSC. Another key factor is Comverse's third-party application interface (MM7) implementation, which enables the use of the Comverse MMSC as a powerful bearer for external winning applications.

CP: In view of your entertainment solutions, do you think that Indian networks could be enabled to provide such services like video-on-demand and other services, and if so, how soon?
Pushpendra Mankad: Comverse can offer entertainment solutions running on 2G, 2.5G and 3G networks. Those are network agnostic. We can offer video-on-demand, but our main offering in this area is VoiCD, a comprehensive content delivery solution that enables the distribution of music content over telephony networks. VoiCD provides a variety of services, including song dedication and voice-mail fun greetings, as well as multimedia m-greeting cards (MMS).

CP: The Indian government is pushing operators to provide services in villages. Both cellular and basic service operators are enthusiastic about it. Will you have any role in providing to our multilingual rural areas services such as voice-operated systems, prepaid systems and similar services as in the urban areas? Your capabilities like voice-operated dialing should be particularly welcome to our rural areas. As the Internet usage is being pushed in rural areas over networks, you should be looking for your products being used by Indian operators.

Pushpendra Mankad: From Mumbai to Miami, voice-activated services like voice dialing and messaging have mass appeal to subscribers because they are natural and easy to use, and no special training is required. Comverse considers India and South Asia as the key for our overall presence and strategy in Asia, having supplied services to more than 35 network operators throughout the region. As demand for voice-activated services takes off globally, we are committed to working with carriers who want to use voice-activated services as a way to increase ARPU and reduce churn. In fact, Comverse has developed close partnerships with leading speech-recognition suppliers such as Speech Works and Nuance, who have products available in over 27 languages.

Comverse is technology vendor "agnostic", meaning that we can work with any speech-recognition provider. However, we often find that our customers ultimately make the selection of the speech-recognition or text-to-speech engine. The decision can be driven by a number of criteria, but it often comes down to the maturity of the speech model for a particular market and language. It is imperative that our speech technology partners continue to develop and support new language models. The Comverse customer base is a global one and calls for the support of many more languages than those typically offered by the main vendors that Comverse has historically partnered with.

Usually, the deployment of a speech-enabled system will not proceed unless recognition can be demonstrated in the buyer's native tongue. In addition, Comverse has significant investment in human factor experts that focus solely on developing speech-enabled products. This multilingual team is responsible for defining the interface between a user and all of Comverse's core voice products. Whereas building a user interface that employs DTMF or "touch tone" could be considered a science and the design of a "VUI" or voice user interface can definitely be considered an art.