­Two companies have teamed up to boost the use of cell broadcast on GSM networks, which has languished as a little used facility within the mobile network services market. Cell Broadcast (CB) enables a message to be sent to handsets based on which cell site they are closest to. Take up was poor due to inconsistent implementation within handsets, as some phone displayed the messages silently on the screen, while others would treat them as a text message.

MCTEL and one2many have developed a platform that identifies handsets that have not enabled cell broadcast reception and can send out an OTA configuration message to switch it on. For those handsets that cannot be so configured, the platform identifies the subscriber and sends them a conventional text message when a cell broadcast is transmitted.

“By adding our device & SIM management to one2many’s cell broadcast technology, we entered a new phase of development for CB.” explains Dr Daniel Mavrakis, MCTEL CEO. “The solution enables operator settings control and ease of configuration. In addition we are now able to deliver CB campaigns to all the handsets attached to one or more cells on the network and even to those that do not support CB! This major improvement underlies further developments of cell broadcast services and the monetization of these services.”

The commercialization of MCTEL’s Cell Broadcast Versatile Delivery will be jointly done by both companies. The companies added that several mobile operators are already interested in testing the solution on their network.