LAS VEGAS -- MobileIGNITE, the leading industry association fostering collaboration to accelerate fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), today announced that Openwave, a leading independent provider of open software products and services, is joining MobileIGNITE. Openwave’s leadership in messaging technologies for both mobile and fixed networks puts it in a unique position to contribute to the group’s interoperability efforts.

Openwave has agreed to the group’s tenets of working on open standards-based interoperability and leveraging SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) with a commitment to IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), the industry’s leading blueprint for convergence. MobileIGNITE’s Interoperability group is working to define common use cases, interoperability best practices and test cases from the baseline open standards on which FMC and other IMS-related applications are based.

“As the line fades between mobile and VoIP networks, carriers will be able to give consumers adaptive messaging services that are independent of network, device or protocol used,” said Richard Wong, senior vice president, products and solutions, Openwave. "We look forward to becoming active in the MobileIGNITE association to ensure industry interoperability and accelerate development and deployment of converged services."

Openwave leads the industry with its IP-based messaging framework; its suite of IP-based messaging products and solutions are designed to address communication service providers’ needs for a new class of adaptive messaging services that help them address convergence across landline, mobile and broadband networks.

"MobileIGNITE welcomes Openwave to our industry effort. As a leader and major application vendor in the fixed and mobile messaging and presence markets, Openwave's participation adds significant momentum to our interoperability vision for FMC applications,” said Leo Nikkari, Executive Director, MobileIGNITE.

MobileIgnite

Openwave Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: OPWV)