TDC Mobile, CMG announce plans for pan-European WAP gateway

NEIUWEGEIN, the Netherlands—TDC Mobile International and CMG Wireless Data Solutions announced their plans to create a pan-European revenue-sharing WAP gateway, which the companies said will give content providers a simple, unified method to offer their services to Europe’s 320 million mobile customers.
The situation now, as in much of the rest of the world, involves content developers entering bilateral agreements with individual mobile operators. The companies said their Mobile Interactive Gateway (MIGway) will bring this painstaking process to an end, giving content providers one outlet to deal with.
“It is MIGway’s goal to become European content owners’ preferred wireless infrastructure provider and we already have negotiations ongoing with global players,” said Henning Vest, chief executive officer of TDC.
The gateway will initially focus on short message service (SMS) applications, but could expand into a variety of areas, including mobile commerce.
This revenue-sharing business model is reminiscent of NTT DoCoMo’s mobile Internet service, i-mode.
Just days after the initial launch of MIGway, the companies announced they will offer wireless access to MSN Hotmail e-mail services to select European carriers.
MSN Hotmail is one of the world’s most popular free Web-based e-mail services and has more than 110 million users worldwide, including 20 million in Europe. MIGway was announced earlier this week as a pan-European revenue-sharing WAP gateway, which the founders said will give content providers a simple, unified method to access Europe’s 320 million mobile customers.
The alliance with MIGway is the first SMS deal MSN has announced and is part of the MSN global wireless strategy.
The first companies to begin trials of the new service are Sunrise, the second-largest operator in Switzerland, and TDC Mobil.