The two were voted off e-New Media's board in an annual shareholders meeting, after a dispute between two groups of directors on various Internet-related investment decisions.

They are tapping the relationships built with international telecommunications operators while working for New Media Corp, which was taken over by e-New Media - formerly country-club operator Essential Enterprises.

Mr Wilson said Cellcast was focusing on the distribution of media content to mobile-phone service subscribers, mainly via short-messaging.

While many mobile operators already offered short-messaging services to customers directly, he said, Cellcast had room to make a profit as it provided an 'operator independent' platform that allowed media firms to reach mobile users of all operators.

'Mobile operators generally see value-added services as a way to retain their customers and tend to provide them only to their own subscribers,' he said. 'Our platform is open to all operators and content providers.'

The firm has formed partnerships to distribute content for media and entertainment firms to mobile subscribers with companies such as News Corp, BMG Online, Sony, Yahoo! and America Online in Europe.

Short-messaging has proven to be more popular among mobile-phone users than mobile Internet services such as wireless application protocol, (WAP), due to slow transmission speed of content via the Internet on mobile-phones.

Short-messaging transmits content such as short sentences, simple games and logos among mobile-phone users, while WAP enables more sophisticated interactivity such as transactions and content search.