Openwave Anounces General Availability of Passport and Smart Policy

Openwave Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: OPWV), a global software innovator delivering context-aware mediation and messaging solutions, today announced the general availability of Openwave Passport 3.0, a service that enables operators to grow new data revenue streams through pay as you consume Web access plans and dynamic promotion of new services at the point of interest, directly inline with the user’s activity. Openwave also announced the general availability of Openwave® Smart Policy, a context-aware policy management solution that is designed to help operators better monitor and manage their network utilization at a user, device and application level against the rising tide of mobile broadband data consumption.

Openwave’s CEO Ken Denman will share further details on how operators can leverage policy management and dynamic campaigning products such as these at Open Mobile Summit on Wednesday, May 26 at 2 p.m. during his speech entitled, “Smart Tactics for Profitable Mobile Data: A context-aware framework for pricing, policy and promotion.”

“As data consumption grows exponentially, some form of tiered service and pricing plans are extremely likely to manage and monetize usage,” said Denman. “An operator’s success hinges upon the ability to deliver innovative service plans that appeal to various consumer segments specifically tailored to match their mobile online behaviour. Adding to this is the challenge of providing fair and reasonable warning of charges to subscribers that many governments are already mandating to prevent ‘bill shock.’ Passport and Smart Policy help operators effectively manage rising network costs and create new revenues through context-aware service plan offerings.”

Openwave Passport and Smart Policy products extend the applications of policy and service to all mobile data enabling, beyond simple volume limits, richer user access plans based on a contextual mobile environment. Passport and Smart Policy seek to match the service to the user, application, device, network and time of access as follows:

• Passport 3.0 extends its already comprehensive feature set with the following new function: Real-time billing via a standards-based diameter interface;
  and
• End user self-care enablement for metering, performing top-ups or service upgrades of internet-based pay as you go or recurring data plans.

Smart Policy helps operators manage the growing demand for mobile data. Policy needs to be smart at the point of delivery – matching to the application conditions, the network access, the user and the Web services being used. Dynamic policy can react to real time conditions and context changes and enable innovative ways of introducing targeted and metered services.

Smart Policy extends Openwave’s traffic mediation capability into IP traffic. The GA of Smart Policy brings the following key features:

• IP traffic monitoring per user;
• Volume and/or elapsed time based quota management and billing per user;
• Time of day, day of week, destination, roaming and network specific policy rules (e.g. free access to certain sites and/or at certain times of day, roaming daypass to avoid ‘bill shock,’ etc);
• Bandwidth management per user, device, destination, time of day, location and other network attributes;
• Proactive end user notification on approaching and exceeding quota thresholds with options; and
• Self-care access for metering information (time and/or volume remaining), performing topups or service upgrades.

Both Passport and Smart Policy work stand-alone but can also evolve an existing investment in Openwave® Integra and its related value added services.