Volantis Signs Up VimpelCom for Russian Mobile Content Push

Volantis, a supplier of intelligent content adaptation solutions for the mobile Internet, announced that VimpelCom will deploy its Volantis Mobile Content Storefront platform.

 

VimpelCom is a provider of telecommunications services in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Along with simplifying complex legacy systems, Storefront is expected to drive the adoption of mobile content and increase VimpelCom’s value added service (VAS) revenue share.

 

A platform for wireless carriers and content providers, Storefront enables managing, selling and distributing digital content through a variety of mobile devices and channels including WAP, SMS, IVR and USSD.

 

In addition, the platform will enable VimpelCom to introduce new content, such as full track downloads, and allow competing content providers on its portal.

 

Volatins officials said, initially, the platform will be used by VimpelCom to manage content offered by its Russian carrier, Beeline, which currently has an active subscriber base of more than 42m subscribers.

 

Later, this solution expected to be integrated into VimpelCom’s six other operator properties in CIS countries — Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Armenia — with a group reach of 80m subscribers.

 

Officials explained that Storefront will integrate into a number of supporting billing and monitoring systems, and those of external content providers, enabling new content interfaces in Cyrilic script.

 

Also, the system architecture combines several integrated solutions, which provides adaptation of audio, video and image content.

 

Officials pointed out that the rollout of Storefront will facilitate a combination of comprehensive menu management options and promotional tools, and allow content to be made available to the consumer at “an appropriate time, site position and optimized for their devices.”

 

Aleksey Lobanov, senior project manager at VimpelCom, said that not only will this deployment enable the company to simplify a range of complex legacy systems, but it will also provide a stable platform from which the company can offer a range of new services to the subscribers in the future.

 

Mark Watson, CEO at Volantis, believes that VimpelCom will now be able to take greater control of the content offering on its portal, allowing it to provide premium services, such as music and downloadable applications that will enable it to further increase its non-voice revenues.