Materna targets MMS to wireline phones, TVs

CHICAGO--

Materna Information and Communications, a mobile application service provider, announced at the Supercomm trade show in Chicago this week that it is enabling text and multimedia messaging between wireline and wireless phones, and also to TVs in the consumer home.

The applications are supported by Materna's message centers for fixed line and mobile environments. Text messages sent to a fixed line number can be translated into voice messages through use of a text-to-speech conversion process. Text and multimedia messages can be sent to TV, allowing the creation of new information services, interaction with TV game shows and other applications, such as SMS alerts delivered while residents are watching DVDs, said Dirk Markner, head of marketing and key account management at Materna.

The German company sees growing market opportunities in messaging over fixed wireline networks, an area that not many message service center companies have shown interest in, said Patrick Dine, vice president, North America at Materna. He said the company already supports a live fixed network messaging service for BT, and also has seen some interest from U.S. carriers.

"They're getting interested in this because they don't want to be replaced by the wireless companies," Dine said.