The world's first ‘viral’ voice conferencing service – where participants can join, leave, re-join and involve friends and colleagues at will – has gone live with Italian mobile operator Vodafone Italy (formerly Vodafone Omnitel).

Coupling revolutionary technology developed by text and voice expert Telsis to an aggressive per-minute pricing model, Vodafone’s Multiparty service allows truly spontaneous conferencing without pre-booking or set-up. Anyone can start a conference and invite others to take part. Joining participants can then issue invitations of their own. A unique aspect of the Telsis system, this capability enables conferences to grow organically, with each participant paying their own call costs. In a further advance, conferences continue for as long as any of the participants want to talk, in contrast to conventional conferencing systems that disconnect all participants as soon as the originator hangs up.

The system is a development of Telsis’ well-proven conferencing technology, which is already in use around the world. It incorporates advanced voice services platforms and controllers to deliver up to 160 simultaneous conferences with no degradation in audio quality. The system places minimal load on existing network infrastructure and is built to minimise the need for operational management. It automatically makes real-time checks with pre-pay control systems to ensure proposed participants have sufficient credit to take part in conferences and interacts with existing billing systems to charge each participant for their part in the conference.

The Telsis model is fundamentally more advanced than ‘standard’ GSM conferencing, which, among its many limitations, is complex to use due to different phone interfaces, often limits conferences to six participants and requires conference initiators to pay all call charges.

Last year Vodafone Italy launched Ultime Notizie (Latest News), a text and audio news service that also uses Telsis-developed technology. Ultime Notizie combines SMS and audio to deliver topics to phone users including current affairs and sport. Phone users subscribe to the service using their keypad to select the types of news they want. They then receive text alerts inviting them to listen. Information on Multiparty and Ultime Notizie can be found at www.vodafone.it

With its headquarters, research and production site in the UK, Telsis (www.telsis.com) has sales and support operations in France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Singapore and Australia. The company offers a range of carrier-grade infrastructure platforms, including intelligent SMS Routers, IN service control points, switches and advanced IVR solutions that support a wide variety of innovative value-added text and voice services. Telsis products are in use with major fixed and mobile network operators around the world.

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Further editorial information and images from:
Telsis Ltd: Adrian Swatridge +44 (0) 1489 76 00 00 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Sage Partnership: Kevin Fiske +44 (0) 1189 344007


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