Aicent SMS eXchange Service Supports Asian Languages
Aicent technology enables mobile operators in any country
to let subscribers send and receive text messages in Chinese, Japanese and Korean
SAN JOSE, CALIF. – SEPTEMBER 17, 2007 – Aicent, Inc. (www.aicent.com) today announced support for Asian languages – such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean – in its SMS eXchange Service for mobile operators. Especially important for operators serving large Asian ethnic communities outside of Asia, this advanced language support lets subscribers write text messages in Asian languages and have them accurately delivered to recipients in other countries regardless of their service provider. Without such support, short message services (SMS) perceive a Korean message, for example, as having been written in English resulting in the recipient receiving an unintelligible string of characters rather than a coherent message.
The research firm IDC finds that 65 percent of mobile users in Asia – where country-by-country mobile phone service adoption often exceeds 90 percent – send at least one text message daily. Increasingly, mobile phone manufacturers are adding multi-language support that includes Asian languages. These two trends make a compelling revenue opportunity not only for mobile operators in Asia, but also operators in the Americas and Europe who serve large Asian populations in cities such as Los Angeles, Vancouver, Sao Paulo, London and Paris. However supporting such a service poses challenges for even the most advanced telecom companies.
The telecommunications industry uses “single-byte” alphabets, used for English and many Western European languages, as the default character set for SMS communications. Text messages composed in single-byte alphabets are up to 160 characters in length. By contrast, Chinese, Japanese and Korean are “double-byte” languages. Because each double-byte character uses twice the memory as characters in single-byte alphabets, text messages composed in double-byte languages are limited to 70 characters and require a different method for processing. Even if both the sender and recipient’s handsets support Asian characters, the network must likewise possess double-byte language support or the recipient will receive a meaningless string of characters instead of the intended coherent message. The Aicent SMS eXchange Service allows mobile operators to easily support subscribers wishing to send messages in either single-byte or double-byte character sets.
“SMART understands our subscribers often send text messages in different languages to people in other countries, and we wanted to offer our large Korean population a service that lets them send and receive text messages in their mother tongue,” said Danilo J. Mojica, head of the wireless consumer division of SMART, the largest mobile operator in the Philippines. “Because sending text messages in multiple languages to people not on SMART’s network presented us with complex transcoding challenges, we chose Aicent to power our Korean SMS service. Aicent’s SMS eXchange Service with support for Asian languages made turning up SMART’s Korean SMS service very fast and easy.”
About Aicent, Inc.
Serving more than one billion mobile subscribers, Aicent Inc. provides data network, messaging and roaming solutions to more than 100 mobile operators worldwide. Aicent enables interoperability between its customers and other carriers by operating one of world's largest GRX networks. Through extensive direct connections and peering arrangements, the Aicent network reaches nearly all 2.5G/3G operators across the globe. Aicent also operates integrated mobile messaging services, including one of the world's first and largest multimedia messaging exchanges, and offers other value-added services that help carriers maximize revenue opportunities. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Aicent has regional offices in Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe. For more information, please visit: www.aicent.com.
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