Silent Circle Announces Strategic European Carrier Partnership With KPN

WASHINGTON and THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Feb. 19, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Silent Circle, the global private communications firm revolutionizing mobile device privacy and security for organizations and individuals alike, today announced a strategic partnership with Dutch telecommunications carrier KPN N.V. The partnership makes KPN the inaugural carrier partner for Blackphone - the world's first privacy-focused smartphone - developed through a Switzerland-based joint-venture of Silent Circle and Geeksphone and launching on Feb. 24 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. KPN will distribute Blackphone handsets to individuals and enterprises among its 44.5 million subscribers across Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands and resell Silent Circle's encrypted mobile apps and services like Silent Phone and Silent Text to give its customers a full range of privacy options for their sensitive business and personal communications.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121016/LA92632LOGO)

"KPN believes and is committed to secure and reliable communications for everyone," said Jaya Baloo, KPN's Chief Information Security Officer. "Customers want to protect their sensitive and private information in the best possible way. This is a unique opportunity to offer encrypted voice, data, and video through our exclusive cooperation with Silent Circle, and KPN can once again pioneer in the global telecommunications arena."

"This unique partnership demonstrates that KPN is one of the most innovative telecoms in the world," said Silent Circle CEO and co-founder Mike Janke. "They have one of the world's strongest privacy and security commitments of any telecom, lead by their CEO Eelco Blok and their CSO Jaya Baloo. This further showcases KPN's commitment to bringing privacy and secure communications to the citizens of Europe."

KPN will help meet high European demand for Blackphone and its wireless subscribers can additionally use their existing customer accounts to purchase the Silent Circle Mobile package, which includes Silent Phone and Silent Text and gain a full range of private communications features for their iOS or Android devices. KPN users can place private voice and video calls with Silent Phone and exchange private text messages with Silent Text, including support for file transfers up to 100MB and additional "Burn Notice" auto-delete protection for documents and multimedia files. To ensure complete privacy, Silent Circle's apps and services never log user metadata and manage encryption keys exclusively on users' devices; meaning Silent Circle and its carrier partners cannot decipher the contents of users' calls and messages.

Silent Circle's partnership with KPN underscores the companies' shared commitment to protecting customers' privacy and further establishes Silent Circle's leadership in offering an unmatched, private encrypted platform meeting worldwide demand for secure alternatives to vulnerable communications mediums. Through their partnership, the companies will leverage KPN's network infrastructure to deliver a dedicated Silent Circle Out-Circle Access calling option for the European market in 2014. Out-Circle access allows a Silent Phone subscriber to place calls to traditional landlines, cell and other phone numbers. These calls "Outside the Circle" are encrypted from the Silent Phone user's handset to the edge of Silent Circle's secure private network in a given region, before they are routed to conventional phone systems. With KPN's support, European Out-Circle Access will add an additional measure of convenience for Silent Phone users requiring the ability to call conventional numbers in Europe and elsewhere.

ABOUT KPN
KPN is the leading telecommunications and ICT service provider in the Netherlands, offering wireline and wireless telephony, internet and TV to consumers and end-to-end telecom and ICT services to business customers. In Germany and Belgium, KPN pursues a Challenger strategy in its wireless operations and holds number three market positions through E-Plus and BASE. KPN provides wholesale network services to third parties and operates an efficient IP-based infrastructure with global scale in international wholesale through iBasis. For more information on KPN visit: http://corporate.kpn.com  

ABOUT SILENT CIRCLE
Silent Circle is a global private communications service headquartered in Washington D.C. providing a revolutionary device to device platform enabling private and secure communications via voice, video, text and file transfer on mobile devices. Silent Circle was co-founded by Mike Janke, former Navy SEAL and security specialist; Phil Zimmermann, the world famous creator of Internet encryption for voice and data and 2012 inductee into the Internet Hall of Fame; and Jon Callas, creator of Apple's whole disk encryption and co-Founder of PGP Corporation.  For more on Silent Circle, go to: https://www.silentcircle.com

Press Contact:
Tom Resau
W2 Communications
[email protected]
703-877-8103

SOURCE Silent Circle