ISLAMABAD, March 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Texting in Pakistan just took a giant leap into the future thanks to a partnership between an open source development firm and a high tech Pakistani cell phone service provider. Austin-based telecom solutions company Telestax has developed a way of rapidly deploying a suite of SMS features for uFone, one of the fastest growing cellular providers in Pakistan.

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Pakistan is one of the developing nations that best exemplifies "leapfrogging" technology. In a country where landlines can be scarce in some parts of the country due to the mountainous terrain and the lack of telecommunications infrastructure, cell phones have become extremely common. There are actually five cell service providers in the country, and the competition basically comes down to who has the most useful features, like custom texting applications.

In this market, uFone has been growing rapidly and has already reached over 20 million subscribers, but it lacked the backend SMS handling capabilities that Pakistani consumers had come to expect. Pakistanis view uFone as a lead innovator in telecom, with network coverage in 10,000 locations and International Roaming for nearly 300 operators in 160 countries. As a result, uFone needed a rapid way to implement new value added services to meet demand. They needed the support of a modern and flexible SMS middleware infrastructure, but didn't have time to develop it from scratch.

Telestax stepped in and offered Telscale SMSC Gateway deployment featuring the ability to handle 260 million text messages per day with high availability, load balancing and failover already built in. Convergence provided system integration to bridge the technology gaps, managing testing and UI development that appeals to the Pakistani consumer.

The new solution from Telestax ended up costing substantially less than other SMSC vendors and at the same time it left the door open for scalability as uFone expands across the country. Telestax has made its name in recent years by developing commercial grade telecommunications middleware based on its vibrant community of open source projects.

Telestax project lead for the Telscale SMSC Gateway explained, "Our mission is to remove complexity from the traditional telecom infrastructure and in the process create a new market for innovative communications services built by mainstream developers at a cost and time comparable to building web services."

In this case, Telestax relied on key building blocks such as: Telscale SMSC Gateway, Telscale JSLEE, Telscale SS7, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Local development firm Convergence handled integration with uFone's cellular network technology and made sure the interfaces were intuitive for local consumers.

For more information on uFone and Convergence contact Athar Rafiq, IT/BSS Project manager at http:www.ufone.com.

For details on Telestax and the Telscale SMSC Gateway deployment at uFone, contact Amit Bhayani, general manager for APAC, at amit.bhayani at telestax dot com.

SOURCE Telestax