Watch Telephony's Security Webcast Find out what Verizon Business is doing with managed network security and how service providers can cash in with this new service. Watch Telephony's Webcast today.

CHICAGO--VeriSign announced at Supercomm that it has landed a deal with Dobson Cellular Systems to supply the content portfolio behind Dobson’s GPRS/EDGE data services. As part of the contract, VeriSign will also provide SMS and MMS interoperability services to round off the data platform.

Based in Oklahoma City, Dobson runs rural wireless networks in 16 states through its numerous subsidiaries, serving 1.6 million GSM customers. VeriSign’s content library is an aggregated portfolio of ringtones, wallpapers, games and other applications, and according to VeriSign, comprises 50,000 individual bits of content. VeriSign’s interoperability solution allows cross-carrier messaging on both SMS and MMS. While full interoperability of SMS has been available for sometime, carriers are just starting to connect their MMS services to one another through hub services like VeriSign’s and Mobile 365’s.

“In today’s market, picture messaging is popular, and video and enhanced gaming will be what customers want next,” Dobson Chief Technical Officer Tim Duffy said in a statement. “We want to be in a position to offer those services to customers quickly.”

Dobson said it would begin rolling out the services in the next 60 days.