Orange UK Adopts m-spatial LSDE Mobile Local Search Engine




Cambridge UK, -/February 7, 2006 - Wi-Fi Technology News/- m-spatial, the market leader in mobile local search, today announces Orange UK as a major new customer for its recently launched Local Search and Discovery Engine (LSDE)?.

Deployed to create Orange Finder, the new local search service on the Orange World Portal, the LSDE promises to encourage data service adoption by offering users a highly personalised, intuitive and detailed local search experience, driving service discovery and increasing operator revenues.

Orange Finder enables Orange World users to rapidly access detailed information for over 2 million businesses and amenities in the UK, along with other live and dynamic local information such as traffic and travel, entertainment venues and gigs, reviews and listings. The service presents the user with a map of the local area, and allows them to rapidly ?discover? the business or information they need via a unique ?assisted browsing? user interface.

Gavin Shurmer, Head of third party services for Orange UK, said; ?Mobile local search is a huge opportunity for Orange and the ability for users to quickly and easily search for information on businesses and amenities nearby is a central feature of Orange World. We selected m-spatial because of its market leadership in mobile local search, for the excellent user experience provided by the LSDE, and for its ability to drive traffic to our existing community of content services.?

Orange Finder is available to Orange World users on the ?tools? section of every handset. Having identified a shortlist of businesses or amenities that meet the user?s needs, Orange Finder uniquely allows the user to view in-depth information about the selected location. Content is dynamically aggregated from a m-spatial?s content partners and deep links to existing Orange World content services such as Cinema Listings, Ents24 ?What?s on? information, Kizoom railway timetables, RAC Travel Incidents and mx-data traffic information.

Andy Walker, m-spatial CEO said ?Mobile Operators like Orange have made huge investments in their portals and content communities. The LSDE offers them the opportunity to increase profits by offering consumers a single on-portal access point to a vast array of compelling local services, fully branded and controlled by the operator. It also offers the future potential to enrich
the user experience through the rapid integration of off-portal content and exploitation of other commercial revenue streams.?

Orange Finder went live in December 2005 and continues to be developed. Further content will be introduced in the coming months to continually enrich the user experience. In addition to content from commercial sources, there are also plans to utilise the features of the LSDE to integrate user generated content into the service.

m-spatial will be exhibiting on stand D65 in Hall 1 at 3GSM Congress in Barcelona 13th-16th February 2006.


About m-spatial
Based in Cambridge, UK, m-spatial is the market leader in mobile local search ? connecting consumers to ?local? businesses and information via mass market mobile phones. m-spatial provides its products via a white label ASP delivery model to mobile network operators, directory providers and search engines. Its international customers include Orange, Vodafone and O2. m-spatial?s innovative and unique approach to mobile local search delivers a ?made for mobile? user experience which offers consumers quick and simple access to both a breadth and depth of ?local? information including businesses, amenities, events and traffic conditions and is compatible with the majority of mass market mobile phones. http://www.m-spatial.com


About Orange
Orange, wirefree and any other Orange product or service referred to in this release are trademarks of Orange Personal Communications Services Ltd. In the UK, Orange provides high quality GSM coverage to 99% of the UK population, and offers roaming to pay monthly customers on 393 networks in 156 countries and to pay as you go customers on 131 networks in 67 countries. At the end of September 2005, Orange had over 14.6 million active UK customers. Across the world, Orange has 57.9 million customers.

In May 2005, Orange gained the top ranking for customer satisfaction among mobile phone contract customers in the annual J.D.Power and Associates 2005 UK Mobile Telephone Customers Satisfaction Study. It is the seventh time Orange has been ranked top by the study. In October 2005, Orange won the Mobile Choice Consumer Awards - voted for by readers of Mobile Choice
magazine ? for Best Network Operator for the fifth year running. In the same month, Orange also won Best International Mobile Operator at the World Communications Awards. The judges said: ?Orange is so solid, you cannot expect more.?

Information about Orange can be found on the Orange website at http://www.orange.co.uk