"Do you believe in love at first sight? or should i walk by again?"
22nd May 2002

Imperium, a newly-established company of three DCU students, has been awarded one of the first SMS (Short Messenger Service) licences from the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulations, in competition with major telecommunications companies Meteor, Digifone, O2 and iTouch. 58 companies in total have received these new licences which will allow a range of mobile services to be offered from business news, sport results, travel - and in the case of Imperium, services for the youth market. These will include chatup lines, jokes, excuses, quotes and teasers.

The three students, Ruairi O Neill, Carl O Bruachain and Cormac O hEadhra, are still undergraduates at Dublin City University. They spotted the niche in the market, and against the odds, they applied for a licence from the Telecommunications Regulator. Their SMS premium rate number is 53033 and when used with the code word 'pickup', 'joke', 'excuse', 'teaser' or 'quote', the mobile phone user will receive an appropriate response within seconds. The cost for each call is between 60 to 62 cents.

"People will use the service because it is new and innovative. And this is definitely a fun service. Premium rate SMS services are available in Norway and UK but not in Ireland - until now", said Ruairi O Neill. "People who are out with a few friends for the evening can text message 53033 for a pick up line and be sure of an amusing response".

The technical support for this new venture is being provided by Zamano Technologies, which was also founded by a group of enterprising DCU a number of years ago. "With the technical backup from Zamano, and support from the DCU's innovation and enterprise centre, invent, which provides us with all the assistance we need to get the company off the ground, we have been able to focus our attention on getting the service up and running", said Ruairi.

"While the Office of the Director of Telecommunications intends to offer more of these SMSs in the future, it is an incredible achievement for students to be given a licence in the first phase", said Leah Lynch of invent.

ENDS

For further details contact:
Eileen Colgan | Tel: 700 5656