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The European Computer Telecoms Group provides the technology for Ringuppsignaler, Tele2/Comviq’s new ring back tone service

Using a customized solution from ECT, Tele2/Comviq becomes the first company in Scandinavia to offer its customers ring back tone service

Stockholm, Munich, 10th August 2004 – The European Computer Telecoms Group (ECT), Europe’s market leader for intelligent value-added services, has provided a turnkey solution for ring back tone service to the Tele2 Group, Europe’s leading alternative telecommunications supplier of fixed-line and mobile telephony solutions. ECT thus brings its new solution to Scandinavia after successful implementations in Germany and China. In a competitive bidding process, ECT was recently awarded the contract for Tele2’s new product, Ringuppsignaler. With its extensive experience in ring back tone projects, ECT was able to provide Tele2 customised user and network interfaces with the shortest possible time-to-market and highest possible cost-efficiency. “I am pleased that our long-time partner, the Tele2 Group, has now also joined the ranks of major mobile operators utilizing our solution for ring back tone service,” said Dr. Marshall E. Kavesh, the ECT Group’s CEO.

Ring back tone is a completely new type of entertainment service for mobile phones that has proven to be very profitable in Asia and other countries. Now Tele2/Comviq is the first mobile carrier in Scandinavia to offer its customers ring back tones, both tapping new revenue streams and further differentiating its mobile services from the competition. The new service can be seen at http://www.comviq.se/ .


With the ECT Ring Back Tone Service, mobile customers can choose various songs, jokes or other sounds played to the person who calls them at the same time as they hear the familiar ring back tone. The service works regardless of who calls. Anyone who is a Tele2/Comviq mobile subscriber or has a mobile calling card can use the service.

The ECT Ring Back Tone Service allows operators to market the service together with one or several content providers, who by own-branded web portals serve as indirect sales channels and contribute to the commercial success of the new service. The mobile-user can set the ring back tones based on the person calling as well as the time of day and date. Subscribers can buy and configure their personalised ring back tone over a wide variety of user interfaces, including the Internet, WAP, interactive voice response (IVR), and SMS.

The ECT Group offers an easily customized and scalable solution for the ring back tone service, having realized several successful projects with major carriers across Europe, including Vodafone D2 in Germany. The solution includes network interfaces for post-paid and prepaid billing and provisioning, a statistics package as well as a content provider interface.

“For over five years, the Tele2 Group has utilized our technology, including the AutoCarrier® Softswitch and INtellECT® Intelligent Network, to realize value-added services across Europe,” said ECT CEO and company co-founder, Dr. Marshall E. Kavesh, “With the new ring back tone service, we are particularly proud to have the opportunity to further contribute to Tele2’s cost advantages and innovative product portfolio.”

Background information on the Ring Back Tone service:

The traditional ring back tone is the tone heard by someone who calls your telephone number. The ECT Ring Back Tone Service allows mobile subscribers to replace this standard tone with a personalised sound file. The mobile subscriber can assign different ring back tones to different callers or group of callers, even dependent upon the date, weekday and/or time. The personalised ring back tone can be a pop song purchased over a portal, a message recorded by the subscriber, a corporate advertisement, a joke, etc.

User Interfaces for your Mobile Subscribers: Each implementation of ECT Ring Back Tone Service generally includes four customised user interfaces for the administration of the service by the mobile subscriber: telephone interface via interactive voice response (IVR), a web portal, a WAP portal and an SMS interface.

Interfaces to Content Providers: The customised web portal provided by ECT offers content providers an open data interface for the uploading of ring back tones, definition of ring back tone group, pricing of ring back tones, downloading of event tickets and statistics, etc. You can make this interface available to external providers also delivering content or reserve this interface for your internal use.

There are three different architectures to realise this service: The AutoCarrier® Softswitch in a central or a de-central service node architecture with tromboning, without tromboning using the call drop back feature in the Mobile-Switching-Center (MSC) or in an Intelligent Network Architecture with the INtellECT® Service Control Point and AutoCarrier® Communications Servers as Intelligent Peripherals.

The complete turnkey solution of the ECT Group contains the following components:

• Customised AutoCarrier® Data Warehousing and Separate File Server, e.g. for library of ring back tones, subscriber data, transaction-based records, call data records, statistics, etc.
• Customised interfaces from the AutoCarrier® Data Warehousing to your Customer Care System and billing databases as well as to content providers.
• Customised user interfaces and front ends for the administration and usage of the system by the subscriber, e.g. SMS, interactive voice response (IVR), WAP, GPRS PDA, mobile handset JAVA applets and web interfaces.

About Tele2

Tele2Comviq’s business offering is mobile telephony. Tele2Comviq’s business idea is a simple one: to make mobile telephony available to as many people as possible at a price that is as low as possible. Today Tele2/Comviq is one of Sweden’s leading GSM carriers. Tele2Comviq’s GSM network provides our customers with one of the most comprehensive range of services in the world. Our aim is to always be able to offer our customers sophisticated services at a fair price. Tele2/Comviq belongs to Tele2 AB, which was established in 1993. Tele2 AB is listed at the Stockholm Stock Exchange and at NASDAQ.

Tele2 AB, formed in 1993, is the leading alternative pan-European telecommunications company offering fixed and mobile telephony, data network and Internet services under the brands Tele2, Tango and Comviq to over 23 million people in 24 countries. Tele2 operates Datametrix, which specializes in systems integration, 3C Communications, providing integrated credit card processing, web payment solutions and public payphones; Transac, providing billing and transaction processing service; C³, offering co-branded pre-paid calling cards and Optimal Telecom, the price-guaranteed residential router device. The Group offers cable television services and, together with MTG, owns the Internet portal Everyday.com. The Company is listed on the Stockholmsbörsen, under TEL2A and TEL2B, and on the Nasdaq Stock Market under TLTOA and TLTOB.

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About the European Computer Telecoms Group

The European Computer Telecoms Group (ECT) is a leading provider of value-added services based on the INtellECT® Next-Generation Intelligent Network and Service Delivery Platform. 

Our mission is to enable our customers, the network providers, to make money the old-fashion way – by giving businesses and consumers cost-effective services they really need and want. This means lowering the capital and operative costs of technology and paying attention to what makes communications more efficient, more individual, and more fun. 

For over 10 years, our customers and partners — leading network operators in Europe, Asia, North America, Africa and the Middle East, such as Belgacom, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Egypt Telecom, MTN, Swisscom, Tele2, TeliaSonera, Telenor, Versatel, Virgin Media and Vodafone, as well as leading network equipment providers, such as Ericsson, — have turned to ECT for the innovations that help them capture new market opportunities and grow revenue and profits.

We make it possible for our customers to rapidly develop and deploy value-added services on mobile and converged networks, such as Ring Back Tone Service, Multimedia Ring Back, Mobile Office, Prepaid Mobile, Interactive Voice Response, Interactive Multimedia Response, Number Portability, Location-Based Services, Televoting, Mass Calling and Network-Based Call Centers. 

All services are programmed in the open ECTXML® Extensible Mark-up Language. This language expands upon the industry standards VoiceXML and CCXML, which ECT has supplemented to include the complete control over the call session independent of the underlying network protocol. ECTXML® applications run on our INtellECT® Platform, which simultaneously supports calls to and from legacy networks, IP-based softswitches and converged networks based on the new industry standard IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). With our partner Ericsson, for instance, ECT value-added services, such as Multimedia Ring Back, have already been implemented within IMS networks. 

Our parent company, the European Computer Telecoms AG, is an unlisted German public company with world-class engineering and production facilities in Munich, Germany. Within Europe, our local direct sales and maintenance services are provided by wholly-owned subsidiaries in England, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. Our products are also sold and supported worldwide by our partner Ericsson as well as used by Ericsson Managed Services to host end-to-end solutions for our customers.

In 2004 and 2005, ECT received the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Award as one of Germany’s fastest-growing technology companies. The ECT Group currently encompasses 125 employees. 

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Status 06 / 2007