8 June 2000

TELECOMS SOFTWARE COMPANY AEPONA ANNOUNCES 97 NEW JOBS FOR BELFAST

"Northern Ireland can be a global centre of excellence for the development of software services for the next generation mobile phone networks," Sir Reg Empey, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment said today.

Sir Reg was speaking at the announcement of a £3.2 million expansion by mobile phone software specialist, Aepona at the company's Interpoint headquarters this morning.

Sir Reg said: "This significant investment highlights a company which is implementing an aggressive growth strategy and providing 97 new jobs over the next two years to enable it to develop the exciting business opportunities which lie ahead in the fast moving mobile phone technology.

"Almost 40 per cent of the population in the UK now own a mobile phone and £20 billion has been spent this year by five mobile phone operators in order to gain the new licences for the third generation networks. These new networks will allow much greater amounts of information to be communicated across the wireless Internet.

"As a major mobile software provider, facilitating the flow of this information is the challenge for Aepona and today's announcement will help to ensure that Belfast becomes a world leader in this area.

"Aepona is an important element in developing the world class telecoms cluster in Northern Ireland, the other players including Phone.com, BT, Kainos, Fujitsu and Nortel Networks," he added.

Also present was Aepona's Managing Director, Liam McQuillan who said the investment would be used to expand the company's capability in third generation networks.

He said: "This investment will enable us to further develop from a software services only company to a services and product software telecoms company. We are fast developing a reputation to deliver high quality software for the global market. Our current clients are based in Japan, North America and Europe, the three most innovative regions in telecoms.

"At Aepona we place the utmost importance on the development and training of our staff in strategic software technologies. It is this which helps keep us at the world's leading edge and will facilitate our success in a very competitive growing market. The cornerstone for this success is our continual investment in people. We see ourselves as evolving with experience in excellence."

Liam McQuillan added: "The company has an excellent knowledge of the industry gained through long term involvement in strategic projects for both the fixed and mobile networks."

Sir Reg commented: "Aepona has significant expertise in delivering high quality software outsourcing services to telecommunications providers worldwide. The company's underlying strategy is to concentrate on nurturing this technical expertise which will underpin the expanding mobile phone revolution.

"It is a credit to the first rate software people available in Northern Ireland who have played a very important role in contributing to Aepona's rapid acceleration."

Aepona Ltd was established in Belfast in October 1999. It was created from the services division of Apion following a £150 million acquisition of Apion's WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) product division by American company Phone.com. The company currently employs 120 in Belfast and Dublin.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

It is IDB's intention to offer Aepona Ltd selective financial assistance of £686,000 towards the cost of the investment.

Aepona are an "Investors in People" company and have won various Regional and National Training awards. The company also holds the ISO9001 accredited award and is working towards achieving the international software Capability Maturity Model (CMM) accreditation.