Europolitan Vodafone offers financial news from Reuters directly in mobile phones

Europolitan Vodafone offers financial news from Reuters directly in mobile phones Reuters and Europolitan Vodafone have signed a collaboration agreement that will make Europolitan Vodafone the first mobile operator in Sweden to offer its customers Reuters' financial news directly in their mobile phones. The financial news will be delivered via SMS and will have a strong focus on events that impact the stock market. The service is available to all Europolitan Vodafone's subscription customers on Europolitan Vodafone's Hantera web site. Those interested can order an SMS subscription to the service, and will subsequently receive the day's five most important financial news items at different times during the day. Reuters' editors assess which news items are most important, evaluating news as soon as it arises. If a news item is deemed to be one of the five most important items of the day, it is sent directly to the subscriber's mobile phone. "A key target group for this service is, of course, our corporate customers, who have to keep updated about all major events affecting the stock market during the day. However, our private customers with a great interest in the stock market will also be able to use the service. Reuters is one of the world's most reliable mediators of financial news, which guarantees the high quality of the service," says Mikael Kluge, Director Mobile Internet at Europolitan Vodafone. The cost of subscribing to Reuters' financial news via a mobile phone is SEK 2 per SMS, which means that the subscription service for five SMS news items costs SEK 10 per day. Financial news will be delivered to customers between 7 a.m. and 8.30 p.m. Monday - Friday. The financial news service is an initial step in the collaboration between Reuters and Europolitan Vodafone, and the idea is for the offering to be subsequently extended to include more of Reuters' services. "According to a Yankee group report published this year, 15 billion SMS messages were sent world wide in January alone, and SMS traffic is constantly on the rise. We are therefore delighted that we can provide Europolitan Vodafone's customers with financial news directly in their mobile phones. For our part, the agreement is a further step in our strategy to provide leading brands within the mobile segment with content. The collaboration also shows our ability to combine content, technology and connectivity to deliver multilingual news," says Phil Stone, Vice President of Reuters Media. For more information, please contact: Mikael Kluge, Director Mobile Internet, Europolitan Vodafone Tel.: +46 708 33 12 05, e-mail: mikael.kluge@europolitan.se Christophe Lorétan, Manager Strategic Development - Media & Wireless Tel.: +41 22 718 54 64, e-mail: christophe.loretan@reuters.com Europolitan Vodafone is a mobile operator with a license to build a 3G mobile telecoms network. Our strength lies in our focus on the development of international services and on service and quality. Europolitan Vodafone employs some 1,400 people and is listed on the Attract 40 list of the OM Stock Exchange through Europolitan Holdings AB. The company's principal owner is the UK company Vodafone with 71 per cent of Europolitan Holdings. Private shareholders, investment companies and pension funds own the remaining 29 per cent. The Vodafone Group is represented on 5 continents and has around 80 million customers (proportional number of customers calculated on the basis of the ownership share). For more information, please visit www.europolitan.se and www.vodafone.com. Reuters premier position as a global information, news and technology group is founded on its reputation for speed, accuracy, integrity and impartiality combined with continuous technological innovation. Reuters strength is based on its unique ability to offer customers around the world a combination of content, technology and connectivity. Reuters makes extensive use of Internet technologies for the widest distribution of information and news. Around 73 million unique visitors per month access Reuters content on some 1,400 Internet websites. Reuters is the world's largest international text and television news agency with 2,157 journalists, photographers and camera operators in 190 bureaux, serving 151 countries. In 2000 the Group had revenues of £3.59 billion and on 31 December 2000, the Group employed 18,082 staff in 204 cities in 100 countries. For more information please visit www.reuters.com ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by BIT http://www.bit.se The following files are available for download: http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2001/05/02/20010502BIT01300/bit0001.doc http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2001/05/02/20010502BIT01300/bit0001.pdf