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Swiftcall has criticised Ireland mobile phone operators on roaming, saying they fail to give adequate advice to customers on charges when making or receiving calls abroad. The criticism from Swiftcall, which offers a competing service letting users pre-pay for roaming, follows weekend reports that the European Commission may take action against mobile phone operators for allegedly colluding to charge exorbitant roaming rates to customers.
Performix Technologies, which sells software to monitor the performance of contact centre workers, has launched Emvolve Real Time. The company said the new product lets managers get information in real-time across multiple sites, and can even alert executives by e-mail or mobile device if performance results drop below pre-defined levels. Originally based in Ireland, Performix is now headquartered in Massachusetts in the US.
The European Commission is to launch the Nanotechnology Industrial Platform in 2003, a forum aimed at gathering all major nanotech stakeholders at EU level. Speaking at a nanotechnology conference in Copenhagen, EU Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin said the Commission is seeking to encourage public and private parties in Europe to join forces to invest in this research area, to help Europe develop a competitive nanotech industry. The Commission is allocating EUR700 million to nanotech research within the 6th EU Research Framework Programme.
Logica said it has signed a deal with Meteor, which will use their technology to verify that pre-paid mobile customers have sufficient credit to pay for text messages before messages are sent. The technology will also let Meteor charge pre-paid customers' accounts in real time for voice and data services, the companies said.
Optical communications equipment company Bookham Technology said on Monday that it will purchase certain divisions of Nortel Networks, who in turn has signed a USD120 million supply agreement with Bookham. The complicated deal, which is subject to Bookham shareholders' approval in November and is classified as a reverse takeover, will see Bookham buy the Optical Transmitter and Receiver and Optical Amplifier Businesses of Nortel. The agreement comes as Nortel continues to face declining revenues and implement cost-cutting measures, including the culling of 7,000 jobs announced in August.
Bank of Ireland Corporate Banking has awarded a contract to Connect Global Solutions to install and commission a document management system, which will replace the bank's existing solution. Connect is the European distributor of Aviator Enterprise software, which will be used by the bank to improve its customer relationship management and customer operations.
Cape Clear said on Monday that British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) has used its Web Services to link its mainframe-based customer relationship management system to the Internet. The system will let BSkyB customers order new services on-line, and then integrate the information with the TV company's back-end mainframe based applications. Cape Clear said the system should reduce the customer service overhead for BSkyB.
Yahoo has announced a corporate version of its instant messaging product aimed at the business market. The company said its Yahoo Messenger Enterprise Edition 1.0 is a business-class system that will offer SSL-based encryption, and said it is working with companies like Sun, Oracle and Novell to integrate the product with their enterprise software systems. Yahoo also said that administrators will be able to enable and disable certain features, such as file transfer, and can also customise buttons and tabs in the software from a central configuration tool. A beta version of the software is due to be available late this year, shipping early in 2003.
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