CANNES, France-Comverse Network Systems Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Comverse Technology Inc., said it is developing a new set of mobile unified messaging applications for the Global System for Mobile communications smartphone market.
The new applications will give subscribers visual access via the Internet to a network-based unified mailbox to allow retrieval of voice, fax and e-mail messages, said Comverse.
Users will be able to direct faxes to print at any fax machine and have e-mail messages displayed on the screen of a phone or “spoken” using text-to-speech technology.
Comverse Network Systems already has developed and demonstrated a wireless Unified Messaging Prototype using a phone equipped with UP Browser technology from Unwired Planet Inc., for the U.S.-based Cellular Digital Packet Data wireless data environment.
Comverse said it intends to support standards implementation such as Wireless Application Protocol, which will work across various technologies. L.M. Ericsson, Motorola Inc., Nokia Corp. and Unwired Planet established the WAP Forum earlier this year.
“Early prototyping for the Wireless Unified Messaging application has used Handheld Device Markup Language technology from Unwired Planet,” said Stewart Hampton, senior business development manager at Comverse Network Systems.
“The market for smartphones and for providing wireless data access is likely to develop around open international standards such as WAP, and will be impacted by how quickly these standards are adopted by leading handset manufacturers.”
