MTS and Acision Triumph With Win at 2012 Global Telecoms Business Innovation Awards for Text Messaging Innovation

READING, England, July 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Launch of Acision Message Plus (SMS Pro) at MTS leads to success in Global Telecoms Business' consumer service innovation category

Acision, the global leader in mobile messaging, and its customer Mobile TeleSystems OJSC ("MTS" - NYSE: MBT), the leading telecommunications provider in Russia and the CIS, are pleased to announce their success at the Global Telecoms Business Innovation Awards winning in the Consumer Service category. Acision and MTS were jointly honoured for the Text Messaging Innovation Award for the deployment of Acision Message Plus (SMS Pro) at the operator.  The awards, in their sixth year, are designed to honour innovative projects that involve at least one telecoms operator and vendor.

Acision Message Plus enables MTS' customers to enjoy innovative, personalised messaging services, such as SMS forwarding, SMS auto-reply and creation of SMS back up (archiving).  Acision Message Plus, which MTS commercially named SMS Pro, was developed to enhance the traditional text messaging experience for users, while enabling them to actively control and personalise content, providing MTS with additional messaging revenue and differentiation in a highly competitive market.

Alan Burkitt-Gray, editor of Global Telecoms Business, said: "Since we started the innovation awards in 2007, we have made it our mission to celebrate the work that vendors and operators in the industry are doing together to develop innovative projects in order to better serve the industry's end customers. Congratulations to Acision and MTS who demonstrated this with their consumer focussed text messaging solution which enables the operator to enrich the text messaging experience and offers the consumer a solution which means they can take SMS to another level, giving them more choice and putting them in the driving seat on text personalisation."

Acision and MTS share a long standing relationship; the Acision Message Plus architecture was implemented whilst ensuring seamless integration with the existing Acision SMSC in place at MTS. As a result of the highly-scalable, high-capacity infrastructure of the solution, MTS can continually extend its SMS Pro messaging capability and design and launch innovative new messaging services for its subscribers, which will increase loyalty by giving consumers more choice over the services they adopt.

Vasyl Latsanych, VP Marketing at MTS, stated: "More than 90% of our subscribers are sending traditional short messages, but with the growing penetration of mobile internet and instant messaging services, the users are expecting increasingly higher requirements for the ordinary SMS service. SMS Pro allows our subscribers to manage short messages the same way they do with email, but outstrips Over-The-Top (OTT) solutions in terms of functionality and usability (comfort). This statement is proven by the demand: the number of the service users has doubled over the past three months - on average SMS Pro users send 3.5 times more SMS."

Jorgen Nilsson, Chief Executive at Acision, commented, "We are delighted to be recognised for the second year running at the Global Telecoms Business Innovation Awards. It is a great honour to receive this award for text innovation, especially at a time when we hear so much in the news about the pressures on text messaging services and revenues.  As we continue to expand our portfolio of messaging services to prolong the lifecycle of text, particularly personalised messaging services such as Group Messaging, Black / White listing, Auto-Reply and Auto-Signature, we can not only drive additional revenue for mobile operators but also ensure easier access through our cloud delivery model which provides connectivity to the Acision Cloud Service Store, hosting a catalogue of new, innovative services."

Russell Grahame, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Europe and Russia, Acision, said, "This accolade proves that we are continuing to develop communication solutions which not only help operators maximise and unlock revenue streams through text messaging services, but that are ultimately designed to benefit the end customer by enriching their messaging experience, giving them better services and making their lives easier."

About Acision

As the global leader in mobile messaging, Acision connects the world by powering relevant, seamless messaging services, which enrich the mobile communications experience and create new opportunities for carriers and enterprises across the world. For more information, visit Acision at http://www.acision.com

About Mobile TeleSystems

Mobile TeleSystems OJSC ("MTS") is the leading telecommunications group in Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, offering mobile and fixed voice, broadband, pay TV as well as content and entertainment services in one of the world's fastest growing regions. Including its subsidiaries, the Group services over 100 million mobile subscribers. The Group has been awarded GSM licenses in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Belarus, a region that boasts a total population of more than 230 million. Since June 2000, MTS' Level 3 ADRs have been listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol MBT). Additional information about the MTS Group can be found at http://www.mtsgsm.com.