At the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes last week, Am-Beo, a Galway-based software firm specialising in rating and revenue settlement systems for the telecoms industry, revealed it had signed a multi-million euro deal with a Nordic telecoms operator, the details of which would be made public within the coming weeks.
siliconrepublic.com can now reveal that the customer is Sonera zed, a wholly owned subsidiary of Finnish telco Sonera Corporation.
Am-Beo (meaning ‘real time’ in Irish) employs 52 people in Mervue Business Park near Galway City. Its flagship product, Rate Rec, provides rating and revenue settlement for voice, data, content and other usage-based services. Another product, Roam Manager, manages inter-carrier roaming agreements and settlements.
Am-Beo has eight customers, mostly European telecoms carriers and service providers, such as Lycos Europe, XTS and Xtempus, but Sonera zed is its first tier one customer.
Sonera zed provides entertainment and information services for mobile devices, mainly by SMS (short messaging service) and in some markets by Wap, via direct relationships with 17 operators in six countries. At the last audit made public, in mid-2002, zed had an average of three million customers per month, who conduct approximately 30 million commercial transactions. Zed’s suite of products includes ringtones, logos, picture messages, games, chat, sports, directory, stock quotes, traffic reports and movie/restaurant guides.
In August last year, Yahoo! took a 15pc stake in zed and the two companies entered into a commercial agreement to deliver co-branded mobile services across Europe, beginning in the UK, Germany and Italy.
The deal allows the leading internet portal to deliver Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mail to mobile consumers in Europe.
Am-Beo’s software will manage and settle the flow of revenue between the various partners that deliver services to zed/Yahoo!’s combined customer base.
By Brian Skelly
