ICE launches push email in Costa Rica

Details: James Barton; Category: Consumer Ecosystems; 13 September 2010; 9174 views

A new push email service is being launched in Costa Rica by the country’s incumbent operator, Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE). The mass market service, branded Syncronizate, is based on Synchronica’s Mobile Gateway middleware, and will be used to add new push functionality to the existing ICE webmail service Acelera...

Consumer, prosumer and business subscribers in Costa Rica will be able to access the new service without needing to upgrade or replace their existing mobile phones, as the Mobile Gateway middleware provides 100% device compatibility by using the built-in email and synchronisation clients found in a wide range of handsets. For older or more basic handsets, the middleware uses MMS and email to SMS. Syncronizate will be provided free of charge to any Acelera or internet GPRS subscriber.

Oscar Arias, Director, Services Division, at ICE, commented: "For a push email service to succeed in Costa Rica it needs to be affordable and to work on any handset, from high-end smartphones down to entry-level devices. Synchronica's solution ticked both boxes, and we're excited to be launching our cost-effective Syncronizate push email and mobile synchronization service to all of our subscribers."

Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of Synchronica, added: "Mobile operators are looking at data services to shore up declining revenues caused by falling voice tariffs. Mobile email has proven to be a very appealing data service which can help to reduce churn and improve average revenue per user (ARPU). Mobile Gateway provides push email on literally all handsets, enabling operators to extend data services successfully to the mass market."

Commenting on the Latin American market, Nick Jotischky, Principal Analyst, Informa Telecoms & Media, said: "Mobile non-voice services, such as mobile email, continue to grow and become more important to operator strategies in Latin America. The size of the non-voice market grew by 38 percent in 2008 to reach USD 11 billion of which USD 4.5 billion comprised the non-SMS data market. Indeed, the number of non-SMS data subscribers (GPRS, CDMA2000 1x and CDMA2000 1xEV-DO) was in excess of 25 million across the region at the end of 2008, accounting for an 18 percent rise during the year."

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