Cable & Wireless signs exclusive deal with Zlango

Cable & Wireless has announced it has signed an exclusive contract with Zlango Ltd. to offer an image-based mobile text service to bmobile customers in the Americas & Caribbean. Touted by futurists and technology bloggers as the “next SMS,” or “texting without text,” Zlango has created an icon dictionary that transcends the limitations of words and language barriers, enabling customers to convey feelings and emotions quickly, practically and playfully.{{more}}

In the coming months, C&W will team up with Zlango to fine-tune the Zlango language for the Caribbean market. “Since its launch in July 2006, Zlango has been expanding quickly across the globe,” explained Paul Hamburger, chief commercial officer, Cable & Wireless Americas & Caribbean, “and we believe it’s a perfect fit for the Caribbean, especially for our younger bmobile customers. It’s a colorful, emotive, and spirited language for communicating. We’re looking forward to watching our customers adopt and develop the language, making it their own.”

Said Zlango CEO Yoav Lorch, “The important thing is that Zlango makes people laugh. This is what we hear from our customers, and this is how we like to keep it. We see ourselves as good-mood generators, since writing and receiving Zlango messages tend to put a smile on your face. Users find Zlango easy to master, and the learning process is intuitive and amusing. We are honored to be working with bmobile across the Caribbean, helping them to develop a refreshing new messaging product for their customers. ”Explaining the significance of communicating with icons rather than spelled words, Lorch said: “We are making a bold and unique step in entering the intimate layer between man and language. In a football match when the crowd cheers “Yeah” – that’s pre-language. Spelling out this ‘Yeah’ you would need to say: “They finally scored a goal”. Zlango aims to remain in this primal area of delight, joy and sadness. This is the zone between soul and language and that’s where Zlango resides. When I receive a Zlango message with ‘Much Good’; I get a visual association, I don’t translate it to words. When I receive the’Yeah’ icon, I don’t need the word ‘Yeah’ at all.”

The Zlango mobile language is made up of over 200 icons neatly divided into intuitive and memorable categories. Most important words, concepts or feelings can be expressed by an available icon. If text is required for a message, it can be easily added anywhere in the message, just like typing an ordinary SMS.

Zlango is a new messaging platform that works with existing mobile communications systems. Users send and receive ZMS’s (Zlango messages) directly over existing SMS infrastructure.