Argela’s Sponsored Services Help Telcoms Keep Rates Competitive

Making international phone calls once cost a bundle, but today callers expect more low-cost or no-cost options—including global calling via the internet or cell phones. Based in Turkey, Argela is an Oracle Certified Partner that offers an innovative way for telecommunications companies to meet consumer demand, with its Oracle-platform-based Multimedia Sponsored Call (MSPC) application. MSPC is part of Argela’s Targeted Advertisement Platform, which enables telecommunications service providers to offer calling and messaging services sponsored by advertising. The solution recently was recognized with a 2008 Oracle Partner Network Innovation Award for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region.

MSPC is positioned to meet a pressing need in the global telecommunications arena. Industry expert Resource4Business Chief Consultant Deepak Pareek explains in his book Business Intelligence for Telecommunications that telecommunications service providers today face a rapidly changing, intensely competitive global marketplace. The industry is shaped by hundreds of competitors vying for global presence. Customer loyalty is at an all-time low, and to survive, telecommunications companies must market products to the masses at discounted prices.

Ercan Yilmaz, Argela vice president of International Business Development, says, “As consumers become more and more price-sensitive, they become willing to spend less for communications. Operators, on the other hand, have to sustain and increase their revenue while preventing churn. MSPC offers a win-win situation in this respect and is becoming a very popular solution all over the world.”

MSPC functions as an enabler, targeting customers through traditional communications channels—such as voice call and SMS—combined with new advertising media targeting. To access telecommunications services, customers provide relevant profile information and opt to view advertising. On the other side, partner advertisers define target markets and provide advertisements and interactive marketing applications. When a customer uses the telecommunications service, MSPC interactively matches suitable advertising to the customer.

MSPC uses Oracle Communications Presence Server, Oracle Application Server, Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database, and Oracle Database. With a standards-based modular architecture, MSPC can be deployed to 2G and 3G networks as well as on Interprocess Message Switch and Session Initiation Protocol networks. Customers can access services by using fixed phones, PCs, or mobile phones. “Partnering with Oracle enhances our ability to add value to our customers’ businesses by providing solutions that are more reliable and scalable in a relatively short time frame,” says Yilmaz.

“Argela provides the technology to enable the services that operators provide,” adds Yilmaz. “For advertisers this is a new medium they can monetize. Our solution provides capabilities such as user profiling, campaign management, targeting, and inventory management. It also provides common services for communicating with channels, such as precall insert, short message service, Voice over IP, and Internet Protocol Television.”

Currently Argela has implementations in Turkey and in the U.S., and projects are under way in India. Bizden Telekom A.S. launched Telefon Bizden, which utilizes MSPC to offer free local and international calls over the internet to more than 200 countries. The service is subsidized by 15- to 20-second commercials. Serdar Erdem, CEO of Bizden Telekom, says, “We worked very hard with Argela to define our needs and customize Multimedia Sponsored Call according to these needs, and finally we ended up with a product that is now getting very positive initial feedback from users and advertisers. We would like to thank Argela for its innovative solution and its team’s differentiating contribution to the project.”

In addition, Argela is partnering with Boingo to promote the new Tuitalk mobile service, based on MSPC, that enables customers to make free international mobile-to-mobile phone calls to more than 40 countries over Wi-Fi networks. Tuitalk also is being used to enable free international calls from PCs to fixed and mobile networks.