Bango delivers widest choice of content and services through an innovative ”browse and buy” shopping experience

6th April 2004

The Carphone Warehouse, the largest independent retailer of mobile communications in Europe, has selected Bango.net technology to enable fast, easy access and flexible payment options for its new mobile content “shop”. Developed by Ringtones.co.uk, the mobile shop offers an exciting range of content for phone users including polytones, textones, voice alerts, Java games and wallpapers. Users in the UK access The Carphone Warehouse’s mobile shop simply by texting go cartones to 87121 or through a bookmark on their phone. They can browse through thousands of different ringtones and pictures, review the latest charts and see what’s new. They can click to buy any content and download it directly on their phone.

“Traditionally, mobile users have had to read catalogues or complicated adverts, then text special codes and words to get the ringtone or picture they wanted,” said Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango.net. “The Carphone Warehouse has made the process much simpler and user friendly by cutting out the complexity and giving people a wider choice of up-to-date content.”

“This new mobile site will boost our incremental revenue by providing our customers with a great after-sales offering,” said Charles Dunstone, CEO of The Carphone Warehouse. “I really like the browse and buy shopping experience on the phone; it should be a big hit with our customers.”

Businesses using Bango technology have learned that enabling users to preview and select from a range of content on their phone generates higher customer satisfaction and lower after-sales costs. Happier users have been shown to translate directly into higher spend and more repeat purchases as people return to buy more.

To help mobile users easily pay for content, Bango’s innovative technology dynamically offers different payment options depending upon where the user is connecting from and from which network. These include on the phone bill by operator billing systems such as Vodafone m-pay or Premium SMS, by credit/debit card or by premium rate phone call. Bango’s automatic payment capabilities currently enable hundreds of millions of mobile customers to pay for content and services, on any network, anywhere in the world.

Ringtones.co.uk, an existing partner of The Carphone Warehouse, also supplies the retailer with in-store “retail” ringtone packs. “Integrating with the Bango service was a surprisingly painless experience even though we have a huge library of content in a range of formats and stringent technical and support requirements,” commented Tom Erskine, Business Development Manager of ringtones.co.uk. “We look forward to working with Bango on other projects and helping The Carphone Warehouse to expand and refine their mobile offerings.”


About Bango.net
Bango.net provides a globally deployed service that enables interactive mobile content and services to be simply accessed, readily promoted and easily charged for, across all mobile operators in more than 40 countries.

Bango works with many industry leaders including Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, Telefonica and O2. More than one thousand content providers world-wide promote and charge for their content and services using Bango. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, England. For further information, go to www.bango.net.

About The Carphone Warehouse
The Carphone Warehouse Group PLC was set up in 1989 by Charles Dunstone with £6,000. Today it is Europe’s leading independent mobile communications retailer, generating annual turnover of £1,841.5m (y/e March 03), offering customers impartial and expert advice, the widest choice of the latest product and unbeatable service.

The company operates across 11 markets and employs over 8,000 people working across the stores, the support centres, the call centres, the online teams and the direct sales teams (telesales).

About Ringtones.co.uk
Ringtones.co.uk is the UK’s leading provider of B2B Mobile Content solutions. Offering a full range of products and services, Ringtones.co.uk partners with a wide range of companies to create content, configure content for mobile devices and develop new and innovative ways to offer content to a customer base.

Ringtones.co.uk works with a range of leading companies including O2, BT, Tesco, Woolworths, Capital Radio Group, Samsung and The Carphone Warehouse to enhance their customers mobile experience. Now owned by First Data Corporation the US multinational, the company is headquartered in Leeds, England and employs 30 staff.

For further information, please contact:

Sarah Keefe
Bango.net
Tel: 07786 932016
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Peter Rennison/Alison Andrews
Peter Rennison PR
Tel: 01442 245030
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Tom Erskine
Ringtones.co.uk
Tel: 07715 609149
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