2007-01-29
Birdstep signs long term contract with WirelessG in South Africa
~ Oslo/Stockholm/Seattle/San Francisco/Cambridge – January 30, 2007
Birdstep Technology has signed a long-term contract with the new customer WirelessG covering South Africa. The contract includes platform licenses, a complete range of development tools, software training and maintenance.
The deal will allow WirelessG to develop custom mobile data solutions for the South African Market based on Birdstep's Connectivity platform. This includes solutions that embrace all kinds of mobile, broadband and dial up networks for all telecom operators in South Africa.
“The order is important to Birdstep, not only do we get a new customer and partner but it also means that we are expanding our market to the African continent ”, says Petri Markkanen, CEO of Birdstep Technology ASA
Over the past five years, mobile communication has grown faster in sub-Saharan Africa than in most parts of the world. The South African market alone has the largest growth on the continent, with a current active subscriber base of more than 26 million. Additional growth in South Africa is being fuelled by the deployment of 2.5G and 3G services as well as Wifi. In Southern Africa the large installed base of wireline users means that these services must also be available over dialup and ADSL connections
"Our agreement with Birdstep is important because Wi-Fi and cellular convergence is one of the key reasons customers are interested in our solution," said Carel van der Merwe, CEO of WirelessG.” Putting together these kinds of services with DSL and Dial as well requires a lot of moving parts, the CoreWorks platform gives us the flexibility to craft a very bespoke solution. We look forward to growing the business together with them”.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Birdstep (www.birdstep.com)
Birdstep Technology ASA is a public company listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE) under ticker 'BIRD'. The company is headquartered in Oslo, Norway with three wholly owned subsidiaries, Birdstep AB in Sweden, Birdstep Technology Inc. in Seattle, US and Birdstep Technology Ltd in Cambridge, UK.
Birdstep Technology is a global software development, marketing and sales company offering seamless connectivity and mobility client software for mobile data users on laptops, pocket PC and Smartphones as well as state of the art embedded database technologies.
About WirelessG
Wireless Hotspot (Proprietary) Limited, trading as WirelessG, is the hotspot operational company of G-Mobile Holdings Limited. The company is a duly registered South African company located in Centurion, situated near Telkom NBSC. The company is registered as an information technology services company in all its facets and related activities.
WirelessG strives to be the African leader in Wi-Fi technology-related skills and in providing Wi-Fi services with a responsive and service-orientated culture. Being a founder member of the GBIA, which is now the largest aggregating network in the world, WirelessG obtained the exclusive rights for South Africa to provide services on the GBIA platform technology, which has received the Deloitte and Touche European Fast 50 Technology award.
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