fring in Austrian Deployment

fring and Austrian mobile operator mobilkom austria have announced the first ever deployment of frings mobile VoIP and mobile Internet community application for a Tier 1 network operator.
Under the agreement, mobilkom austria will give customers of its A1 brand access to a dedicated version of the fring mobile client, containing frings open-platform suite of Internet-based mobile communications and community services. This will enable A1 over IP users to talk, chat and interact with each other and all of their online communities, and access mobile web applications, using their mobiles Internet connection capabilities.
fring  is a mobile Internet community and service that enables its users to talk, chat and interact with other fringsters and Internet services including Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, Twitter, Yahoo! and others. fring operates on Symbian Series 60 devices, Samsung S60, Sony Ericsson UIQ Smartphones, Windows Mobile, iPhone, J2ME, Linux Mobile and Intels Moblin devices, which currently represent more than 1000 mobile handsets
In Phase 1 of the project, the A1 over IP service will be integrated into frings SIP service, offering fring users the opportunity of using A1 over IP accounts and also the ability to configure their A1 over IP accounts to work within fring.
Phase 2 will see a fring application being built into mobilkom austrias mobile offering and pre-installed onto a large number of mobile devices. This will comprise frings entire feature set of Voice over IP, instant messaging, real-time presence/availability indication, file transfer, and access to frings new always-on mobile Internet applications, fring Add-ons.
A broader set of A1 products and features will be integrated into fring during phase 2, which the company says will provide a true convergence of residential and mobile SIP telephony, mobile community and mobile Internet provision.
Todays announcement represents just the beginning of a sea change in the relationship between mobile VoIP and traditional mobile carriers, says fring CEO, Avi Shechter. It demonstrates a recognition by a leading operator that mobile Internet-based communications and community are a valuable and integral part of their current and future eco system.
The agreement will also see fring & mobilkom austria working closely together to distribute and market the new products via a number of initiatives including pre-installation on handsets, a dedicated landing web page, promotion via the fring German-speaking blog, joint media announcements and online activity.