Rave Wireless has struck partnerships with T-Mobile, AOL and RIM's BlackBerry to improve campus safety.

Through the partnership with T-Mobile, Rave Wireless has implemented a direct SMS bind into the carrier's network to enhance reliability, message delivery performance and peace-of-mind for T-Mobile customers subscribing to the Rave Alert network. In addition, the two companies will co-market the award-winning Rave Alert and Rave Guardian mobile safety applications to college and university customers throughout North America.

"Rave Wireless has strong partnerships with multiple carriers in order to access a direct bind to carriers' subscribers who are intended to receive a Rave Alert SMS message," said Raju Rishi, Chief Strategy Officer at Rave Wireless, Framingham, MA.

"Our new partnership with T-Mobile and the relationships we have with other carriers increase the reliability of Rave Alert by providing more direct access to recipients if and when needed," he said.

Rave Alert provides an easy way to send broadcast or targeted text messages, email, recorded voice messages, RSS feeds and instant messages through AOL's AIM to notify your community of important announcements.

Rave Wireless just recently announced the expansion of the Rave Alert emergency notification platform with the addition of AOL's AIM service.

Rave Alert enhances campus safety by providing college and university administrators an easy and effective way to send broadcast or targeted emergency notification and other important announcements.

The messages can be created and sent from one easy-to-use web console, with complete reporting on message delivery and performance.

"Rave Alert is a multi-modal alerting engine," Mr. Rishi said. "Even though SMS is a very powerful conduit for reaching the majority of people in a designated community, people sometimes are in a lab setting (such as a library) and their phone is off.

"AOL's AIM is one of the most popular IM platforms - especially among college students - so by adding this mode of communication as another vehicle for disseminating emergency alerts, universities and enterprise clients increase the reach to intended recipients," he said. "Rave provides access to other IM platforms but our arrangement with AOL's AIM is more rigorous."

Rave Wireless also announced deeper product integration between Rave's award-winning safety applications and BlackBerry handsets.

Rave Wireless will work with RIM's sales groups to market the alerts services within higher education and other vertical markets.

Marketing efforts kicked in the beginning of November.

"BlackBerry is an important device for mobile police officers and through the partnership we formed with RIM we're developing a Mobile Guardian application specifically designed to work on this device so that police officers in the field can view Rave Guardian cases from their smartphones," Mr. Rishi said.

"Rave Guardian transforms users' mobile phones into personal safety devices," he said. "When the phone-accessed application is activated, it automatically sends the user's picture, mobile number and personal information to police.

"With the RIM integration, mobile police officers will soon be able to access this Guardian case information on Blackberry smartphones."

The integration provides organizations with the ability to use the Rave Alert system to send emergency notifications to BlackBerry smartphone users via PIN messaging.

A PIN uniquely identifies BlackBerry smartphones on the wireless network.

By sending alerts via PIN message, administrators can track who has received and opened the messages.

This new delivery mode will join text messaging, email, RSS and recorded voice messages as ways to send notifications through Rave Alert; further increasing broadcast alert deliverability and accountability.

"RIM has its own messaging rule set which provides message delivery confirmation," Mr. Rishi said. "We are working with RIM to tie the Rave Alert application into this rule set to ultimately provide police and security departments with more details in regards to confirmation of emergency messages to Blackberry devices.

"Also, since Blackberry is a popular device for enterprises to provide to employees, the additional level of message delivery information provided by the RIM network will assure enterprise customers they've reached the intended recipients," he said.