Aldiscon Limited was a

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

software company founded in

Dublin, Ireland Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 cen ...

, in 1988. The company supplied software products to mobile phone operators and became a leader in the supply of

short message service centre A Short Message Service Center (SMSC) is a network element in the mobile telephone network. Its purpose is to store, forward, convert and deliver Short Message Service (SMS) messages. The full designation of an SMSC according to 3GPP is ''Sh ...

s (SMSC).

History

Aldiscon was founded in 1988 by Gilbert Little. Aldiscon launched the world's first commercial Short Messaging Services in 1993 using its Telepath SMSC platform in the UK, Hong Kong and USA. By the time of its sale to

Logica Plc Logica plc was a multinational IT and management consultancy company headquartered in London and later Reading, United Kingdom. Founded in 1969, the company had offices in London and in a number of major cities across England, Wales and Scotl ...

in 1997, the company supplied over 70 mobile carriers worldwide in technologies including

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as ...

DCS 1800 GSM frequency bands or frequency ranges are the cellular frequencies designated by the ITU for the operation of GSM mobile phones and other mobile devices. Frequency bands GSM frequency usage around the world A dual-band 900/1800 device i ...

UMTS The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the Inte ...

IS-95 Interim Standard 95 (IS-95) was the first ever CDMA-based digital cellular technology. It was developed by Qualcomm and later adopted as a standard by the Telecommunications Industry Association in TIA/EIA/IS-95 release published in 1995. The ...

(CDMA),

CDMA2000 CDMA2000 (also known as C2K or IMT Multi‑Carrier (IMT‑MC)) is a family of 3G mobile technology standards for sending voice, data, and signaling data between mobile phones and cell sites. It is developed by 3GPP2 as a backwards-compatible ...

, ANSI-136 (TDMA), Japanese PDC and

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...

iDEN Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN) is a mobile telecommunications technology, developed by Motorola, which provides its users the benefits of a trunked radio and a cellular telephone. It was called the first mobile social network by ma ...

. Aldiscon developed the

Short Message Peer-to-Peer Short Message Peer-to-Peer (SMPP) in the telecommunications industry is an open, industry standard protocol designed to provide a flexible data communication interface for the transfer of short message data between External Short Messaging Entit ...

(SMPP)

industry protocol for exchanging SMS messages between SMS peer entities such as short message service centres, voice mail systems and distributed telemetry elements. By the late 1990s, the company put the protocol into a non-profit entity called the SMS Forum whose members included both messaging system suppliers and carriers. Aldiscon founders helped establish several mobile software companies based in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland, UK. Some include Aldiscon, Apion, Aepona, Ammeon, Accuris Networks and Altion. Aldiscon originally consisted of three subsidiaries: Aldiscon Telecommunications Software Systems, Ltd. based in Dublin, Ireland; Aldiscon, Inc. based in Dublin, Ohio USA; and Aldiscon Northern Ireland Ltd. based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Acquisition by Logica

Aldiscon was acquired by

of London, UK in 1997 for GBP 56.9 million. Logica Plc was a large systems integration firm and it renamed Aldiscon as Logica Mobile Networks. By 2002, Logica Mobile Networks generated USD 400M of Logica's revenue. At the time of the sale, Aldiscon Northern Ireland was spun out into a separate company, Apion Ltd, and retained by the original owners. Logica Mobile Networks was divested from Logica in 2007, with the new company named

Acision Acision was a privately held British mobile communications network infrastructure company engaged in messaging and charging systems that enable popular services such as Short message service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), mobile inter ...

and Aldiscon founder Larry Quinn returning to chair it. In October 1999, Phone.com acquired APiON's

Wireless Application Protocol Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a technical standard for accessing information over a mobile wireless network. A WAP browser is a web browser for mobile devices such as mobile phones that use the protocol. Introduced in 1999, WAP achieve ...

(WAP) product division. APiON shareholders received 1.3 million shares in Phone.com valued at approximately £150 million (US$239 million). A new spin off company, AePONA, was created at same time and retained by the original owners.

References

Telecommunications companies of Ireland Irish companies established in 1988 {{telecom-company-stub