The project Trans-European Mobile Publishing Service for European SMEs (mMag) is an eTEN project started in June 2005 with the duration of 18 months. eTEN is the European Community Programme designed to help the deployment of telecommuni cation networks based services (e-services) with a trans-European dimension.

Challenges

FOKUS will conduct and manage the German end-user trial using its national German 3G beyond applications testbeds, including set-up, validation, evaluation and contribution to business planning activities. FOKUS will also be responsible for dissemination and for demonstrating the service to mobile operators in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Poland. FOKUS will also interconnect its UMTS service platforms to WIT’s and conduct interoperability and roaming trials.

Project Goals

The project will undertake an empirical market validation of the mobile publishing service with all participants in the value chain including SMEs and end-users, which will include a number of interoperability trials and roaming assessments across member states.
The mobile publishing service (“mobile magazine”) enables SMEs to publish information and content for mobile devices. It allows SMEs to gain access to mobile operator’s networks and thus integrate value added mobile services, such as location based services, multimedia messaging and text messaging, into their published content.

The project will develop a strategic plan for the deployment of the m-Mag service.

Technology

The validation includes analysis of current market conditions, of the market potential and the legal and regulatory conditions in the field of mobile publishing and mobile services in the EU and its member states respectively.
The validation of the service will be supported by a number of trials which will take place in Ireland (WIT’s UMTS test bed), the UK (AePONA Ltd.’s Parlay test lab), Spain (Telefónica’s mobile network), Germany (Fokus’ UMTS network), Greece (Temagon and OTE’s mobile network) as well as a trial which will be conducted in China. The project will help to gain experience in operating a trans-European service under realistic conditions in the EU-member states Ireland, the UK, Spain, Germany, Greece and an extra non-member state, China.
The project partners will localize and adapt the service to enable the service to support local languages and cultural preferences, will acquire SMEs and end-users for the project trials and will attempt to develop new markets for the service.

Partners

The project partners include:

• Waterford Institute of Technology WIT (Ireland),
• FOKUS (Germany),
• Aceno Mobile Services Ltd (Ireland),
• AePONA Ltd. (United Kingdom),
• Telefónica I+D (Spain),
• Temagon OTE (Greece),
• China Academy of Telecommunications Research CATR  (China)