Amid all the international firms revealing their big news to the mobile industry, there were plenty of Irish companies eager to make their voices heard.

Among those at the show with positive news stories was Eircom which announced at the Barcelona event that it was planning to make a push for business customers with its eMobile brand. The company is offering its new mobile products to business users ranging from small and medium enterprises to large corporate enterprises and public sector organisations, making it part of Eircom’s bid to offer the full range of services to business customers.

“We’re going to challenge the status quo in business mobile,” said Ronan Kneafsey, managing director of Eircom Business.

“It’s about enabling our business customers to be able to make their businesses more efficient and more effective, whatever technology they require to access data. It enables that whether people are mobile or in their offices. eMobile is a key element of our overall proposition to our customers.”

The company has, in recent months, been investing heavily in transforming its business model for its corporate and SME customers, providing seamless and integrated services from cloud-based services in IT infrastructure and data centre services through to voice and broadband support.

“Where a lot of the cost savings will come from is from driving more efficient business for customers,” said Gary Disley, marketing director Eircom Business.

Mr Kneafsey said the company was planning an aggressive push on pricing, and would pitch its offering to look at several key business concerns, including data requirements and roaming in the UK.

New contracts

The Now Factory, meanwhile, used the event to announce the fact that is has signed five new Long-term evolution (LTE)contracts with major telecoms providers in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. The company helps give communications companies insight into mobile data usage across their networks, which they can then use to deliver a better user experience and drive data profitability.

“With the increase in mobile data usage, there is pressure on mobile networks to invest in new infrastructure, mainly LTE networks, to meet that increased demand,” said Oliver Finn, vice-president of marketing with the Now Factory.

“They’re also competing in a very tough environment, so traditional voice and messaging services is kind of flat, and there is competition from mobile virtual network operators, and even the threat from players such as Google and Facebook.”

Against that backdrop, these companies are also trying to make money, Mr Finn explained, creating a demand for The Now Factory’s services. That includes the monitoring of networks, allowing companies to get a better insight into what is happening on their infrastructure, managing and improving the customer experience, and also monetising the networks and driving new revenues.

“With our platform, companies are seeing the benefits of consolidating that under one vendor,” he said. “We’re definitely seeing huge momentum.”

The Now Factory has 40 operator customers across 28 countries, including developing countries, where customers are going straight into mobile technology and smartphone adoption, skipping the fixed line legacy that other, more developed countries have seen.

Ireland pavilion

The company, along with others such as Altobridge and Tango telecom, has graduated from the Ireland pavilion at Mobile World Congress to its own stand at the event, leaving the way clear for other companies to come in who may be relative newcomers to the mobile event.

Among those are firms such as Nearform, Heystaks and Madcalm, who were attending the event for the first time.

Nearform was using the event to discuss its upcoming technology with potential partners.

Although its established business is in providing design, consultation and delivery of web and app services, the company is exploring the possibility of commercialising its technology for real time peer to peer services in the cloud.

Also on the Enterprise Ireland stand was Inhance Technologies, which recently rebranded from You Get It Back, and announced it was opening a US base.