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The communications world has changed; today’s consumers are pushing the limits of mobility, demanding seamless access to communications, applications, and even video—anywhere, at any time, and on any device. This growing demand is forcing major transformations in the industry, as operators, Internet portals, and media companies must provide highly secure, scalable services that can facilitate interoperability between multiple protocols and devices. Also, to compete more effectively in this mobile market, consumer brands must leverage cost-effective systems for securely distributing media across myriad technologies. VeriSign, the leading provider of digital infrastructure for Internet and telecommunications networks, offers a series of solutions for mobile-media management, helping operators, Internet portals, media companies, and consumer brands to mitigate the complexities and risks of digital-content distribution while lowering costs and increasing customer loyalty. In the first quarter of 2006, VeriSign greatly expanded these capabilities. 

Expanding the VeriSign Mobile-Content Infrastructure 
On February 13, 2006, VeriSign announced the acquisition of Three United Mobile Solutions AG (“3united”), a leading wireless applications service provider based in Vienna, Austria, which greatly increased VeriSign’s reach in the mobile market. 3united will greatly enhance VeriSign’s digital infrastructure capabilities with a robust network that directly connects with more than 50 wireless operators serving more than 400 million customers around the world and in fast-growing markets in Eastern Europe, EMEA, and the United States.

The 3united network is supported by one of the most efficient independent wireless application data centers in Europe, which processes millions of content, m-commerce, and messaging transactions every month. The 3united data center facilitates secure  connections to over 40 mobile-network operators in Europe as well as key mobile networks in the U.S. Leveraging a highly scalable Consumer Oriented Infrastructure Network (COIN) cluster architecture, the 3united data center facilitates thousands of business processes per second, enabling such applications as mass voting for interactive TV and radio.

Mobile operators and media companies have successfully delivered mobile applications via this infrastructure for over 5 years, including Short Message Service (SMS), m-commerce transactions, and video. 3united operates over 350 mobile applications internationally, which broaden VeriSign’s portfolio of content services. The acquisition will allow VeriSign to establish relationships with carriers that use 3united’s extensive platform, including SingTel (Singapore), One (Austria), Hutchinson3G (Hong Kong), Mobilkom/Vodafone (Austria), Maxis (Malaysia), Debitel (Germany), and Polkomtel (Poland).

Moving Into Broadband  
A month later, on March 13, 2006, VeriSign announced the acquisition of Kontiki, a leading provider of managed peer delivery systems for high-quality video, software, and digital content, which greatly enhances VeriSign’s broadband content-delivery infrastructure. By leveraging the unused resources of networked computers, Kontiki’s grid-based system allows organizations to deliver digital content more quickly and inexpensively than standard file-transfer methods. In addition, the Kontiki infrastructure allows users to receive high-bandwidth content without impacting system performance. Kontiki also offers a suite of services for seamlessly integrating video and other high-bandwidth content into a variety of corporate multimedia applications. These services are powered by the Kontiki Delivery Management System (DMS), which simplifies publishing, protecting, delivering, and evaluating video communications.

One of Kontiki’s customers is a large Internet portal that publishes a variety of Web sites that each distribute large amounts of content. One such site delivers as many as 60 terabytes of data and video content to over 4 million users, every month. Since the site specializes in entertainment content, files can be as large as 200 megabytes, but the Kontiki infrastructure allowed the site to seamlessly deliver the content without taxing its servers. Another of the portal’s sites distributes software, and facilitates over 2.5 million downloads per day, thanks in part to the scalability, reliability, and performance that Kontiki services offer.

An End-to-End Mobile-Media Management Solution 
On March 20, 2006, VeriSign built on the 3united and Kontiki acquisitions by announcing the acquisition of m-Qube, Inc. (“m-Qube”), a leading mobile-channel enabler that helps companies to develop, deliver, and bill for mobile content, applications, and messaging services. m-Qube delivers premium messaging and content services that can reach more than 200 million wireless subscribers in North America. The m-Qube application platform powers hundreds of mobile storefronts and marketing campaigns for customers that include Sony Pictures, CBS, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Warner Music Group, Reuters, GQ, Virgin Mobile Canada, and Telus Mobility.

The m-Qube Mobile Gateway, a managed and monitored, carrier-grade network for delivering messages, premium content, and Java applications through Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Message Service (MMS), and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Push, greatly complements this infrastructure. The m-Qube Mobile Gateway provides access to 170 million wireless subscribers throughout North America, and  offers premium billing solutions with a variety of financial settlement options, allowing organizations to quickly connect to carrier networks and start generating revenue. Customers manage the services via a secure Web interface.

m-Qube also offers a series of Web and WAP-based mobile storefront solutions that allow organizations to quickly promote and deliver content such as ringtones, images, games, and messaging, to millions of wireless subscribers across a range of media types and handsets. The storefronts provide compelling features for consumers, such as browse-and-search capabilities, Top-10 lists, Featured Artists sections, and new-content promotions.

Finally, m-Qube offers a series of solutions for supporting organizations in mobile marketing initiatives, and has delivered over 400 such programs for brands and their agencies. m-Qube can help organizations to reach a wide consumer base, leveraging SMS, MMS, Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), Binary Run-time Environment for Wireless™  (BREW™), WAP, instant messaging, and interactive voice response (IVR) application services.

A Broad Strategy for Digital-Content Management  
With a combined expertise in security, the Internet, and telecommunications, VeriSign is an attractive partner for organizations seeking to gain the maximum revenue from increased demand for content on any device. With the acquisitions of 3united, Kontiki, and m-Qube, VeriSign is well-positioned to help a growing number of organizations navigate issues of security, interoperability, scalability, and data-integrity.  This is critical to enable the seamless delivery of new services and content to large numbers of consumers across multiple devices. Lewis Ward, research manager for IDC, agrees. “This combination of assets should allow VeriSign to offer carriers, Internet portals, media companies, and consumer brands a cross-functional suite of services.”

Ward says that the m-Qube acquisition strengthens VeriSign’s value proposition  to U.S. service providers. “Verizon Wireless’ and Sprint Nextel’s off-deck/portal content sales are likely to surge in 2006,” says Ward, “and VeriSign is now well-positioned to benefit from the ‘bump’ that Cingular experienced when it shifted toward an off-deck/portal sales focus 18 months ago.” Ward also sees potential in VeriSign’s ability to tap into the emerging mobile-marketing arena. “IDC believes that 2006 will see more sophisticated marketing campaigns being conducted. Interactive campaigns will be a growing source of new revenue for companies that can deliver consistent results.” Finally, Ward explains that the acquisition allows VeriSign to greatly facilitate convergence across voice and data networks. “Internet and wireless technologies are coming together in a number of interesting ways, and this is an area that VeriSign understands pretty well,” says Ward. He goes on to say that the acquisition also facilitates a convergence between the interests of consumer brands and wireless. “Leading brands want reach,” says Ward, “and m-Qube can offer broad reach quickly.” (Source: IDC, VeriSign Acquires m-Qube, Document #35094, March 2006.)

VeriSign operates the world’s largest independent SS7 network and a mobile roaming footprint that extends across over 70 countries. VeriSign Communications Services include a comprehensive selection of connectivity and interoperability services, intelligent database services, content and applications services, and billing and payment services. For more information, visit the VeriSign Communications Services section of the VeriSign Web site.