Ericsson to deliver yacht race content to mobiles

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 19 October 2005 18:48

Your IT - Home IT

Ericsson has been chosen as the global mobile partner to the Volvo Ocean Race and will deliver real-time content from the race to the mobile phones of participating operators around the world.

In conjunction with Volvo Ocean Race, Ericsson will launch a new hosted-content service, the Volvo Ocean mobile portal.

The race has taken place every four years since its inception in 1973. This year's event will start next month from Galicia, Spain. Seven VO70 boats will cover 31,000 nautical miles visiting ten ports around the world over eight months. During the race, reports from each of the crews will be delivered daily as MMS and SMS alerts, radio and video clips, streaming and mobile blogs, to subscribers' mobile phones.

The portal is integrated and hosted by Ericsson under a managed services agreement and enables operators to offer the Volvo Ocean race service under their own brands. The portal can be part of an operator's existing portal or used as a stand-alone service.

The race content and the day-to-day maintenance are managed from Ericsson's operation centre in Dallas. Also included are systems integration of the portal into the different operator environments and distribution and digital rights management.