London - The European Commission's Joint Research Centre has selected Clickatell, the world's leading mobile messaging operator, to run its EMM (European Media Monitoring) SMS alert service. The real-time service informs Commission Spokespersons and nominated EC VIPs, of important breaking news detected by the EMM.

The EMM monitors some 15 news agencies, more than 900 online media and all daily press reviews from the 27 capitals of the EU and beyond. In selecting Clickatell it was imperative that its SMS alert service was robust, reliable and with international reach, given the recipients are often on EC missions around the world. The service also has to be in real-time, to ensure the message will be received by the recipient immediately following the request to deliver by the EMM.

In the event of a global emergency, the relevant EU commissioner would be one of the first to be alerted to the news. The news would be identified by EMM from the point of origin, translated into Unicode and subsequently delivered by SMS to the relevant commissioner in their respective language. The advanced technical platform for the SMS service, developed by Clickatell, ensures the commissioner is ready to take action and address the issue almost immediately.

"Clickatell was selected after a thorough and rigorous tender process to provide the EC with this service," said Clive Best, Project Leader European News Monitor at the EC. "While SMS is being used successfully as a low-cost, instant and pervasive communications tool in the private sector, its value cannot be overlooked in facilitating effective e-government. News reports are monitored in 25 languages and the ability to translate these reports into SMS alerts underlines this value."

Deon van Heerden, managing director of Clickatell UK said, "We are seeing an increase in the adoption of SMS and multimodal messaging as a critical communication tool, not only in government but in businesses large and small as organisations reach out to their customers and constituencies. In today's connected world, 1 in 3 people have access to a mobile phone. As a result, messaging solutions like this will grow as we strive to save lives with disaster alert messaging and also help businesses to touch their customers with value based messaging. The ability to update Commission Spokespeople and VIPs on breaking news as it happens, any where in the world at anytime; is a very powerful tool in the ever changing world we live in."

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