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White Paper T310/T312
15 January 2003
Huge business potential
Network operators can now enhance their services
and attract more customers by offering pictures,
animations, ring signals and melodies for download
at their portals. Operators can charge more per
EMS message since it contains more data. Thereby
EMS adds more value to the operators and to the
end users.
Increase SMS revenue
EMS uses the same basic network support as
ordinary SMS, and with the same familiar user
interface. From an operator's point of view, SMS is
low tech because minimal investment is needed to
provide an effective EMS service to subscribers
and little maintenance is required. EMS will create
additional revenue for service providers and
network operators by increasing SMS traffic.
Compatible with SMS standards
Users will find EMS as easy to use as SMS. At the
moment 15 billion SMS messages are sent every
month worldwide. Roughly 80% of this traffic is
user-to-user, i.e. mobile phone users sending short
messages to each other using the keypad of the
phone to enter text. The remaining 20% is shared
by downloads and notifications of different kinds.
The Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS) was first
submitted to the standards committees by
Ericsson. Ericsson presented the outline structure
of EMS to the relevant ETSI/3GPP committees. The
major mobile phone manufacturers and most
operators are actively contributing to the 3GPP
standards. Hence the EMS standards have evolved
and are now stable and complete as part of the 3rd
Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technical
specification.
An EMS message can be sent to a mobile phone
that does not support EMS, or only supports part
of EMS. All the EMS elements i.e. text formatting,
pictures, animations and sounds are located in the
message header. The EMS contents will be ignored
by a receiving phone that does not support the
standard. Only the text message will be displayed
to the receiver. This is true consumer-friendly
standardization. EMS is compatible to SMS across
most of the range of mobile phones from the oldest
to the newest.
Some companies in the mobile phone industry
have developed their own messaging technologies,
which only work with their own phone models.
Network operators are in favour of EMS because it
is universal – many of the major mobile phone
manufacturers are constructively improving and
developing the EMS standards even further for
implementation in their products.
Examples of EMS contents and
applications
A wide range of contents, applications and
services may be developed. Below is a list of
examples and areas where messaging can be
enhanced with EMS.
User-to-user message
Messages usually originating from the keypad of a
mobile phone can include pictures, melodies,
formatted text with EMS.
Voice and e-mail notifications
Notifying mobile phone users that they have new
voice or fax mail messages waiting - including
icons or melodies with EMS.
Unified messaging
The user typically receives a short message
notifying them that they have a new message in
their unified messaging box, with icons or
formatted text further enhancing the message.
Internet e-mail alerts
An Internet e-mail alert is provided in the form of a
short message that typically details the sender of
the e-mail, the subject field and first few words of
the e-mail message, and in this case formatted text
is excellent to identify message elements.
Ring signals
Downloading ring signals from the Internet.
News & commercials
World news illustrated, sports scores and news
headlines, finance and stock market news with
diagrams and tickers, commercial product
promotions, weather reports with maps, tunes from
TV commercials as ring signals.
Info & entertainment
Ring signals, e-greetings, football club logo, joke-
of-the-day illustrated by pictures or sound,
horoscopes, movie related animation or theme