Mobixell Networks, a leading provider of mobile multimedia and advertising solutions, announced Thursday the acquisition of Santa Barbara wireless infrastructure firm 724 Solutions.

The merged company will create a global organization with local sales and support capability in the United States, United Kingdom, China, Switzerland, India, Israel and other countries, and with a customer base of more than 350 mobile operators worldwide.

The expanded company will focus on delivering rich-media mobile Internet and messaging solutions for mobile operators, enabling them to exploit the opportunities presented by the explosion of rich-media data traffic and the emergence of new communication patterns driven by the ever-increasing mobile media consumption on laptops, cell phone and other mobile devices.

The rationale for the acquisition was driven by a joint vision of the two management teams, also shared by the combined company’s customers and channel partners, as well as compelling synergies in the core competencies and technologies.

“The recent explosion in mobile data offers a challenge and an opportunity for mobile operators. A challenge in terms of optimizing the usage level for bandwidth hungry applications, such as rich-media and video, but more importantly an opportunity to capitalize on the growing revenue potential of mobile data and compensate for the reduction in voice revenues,” Mobixell CEO Amir Aharoni said. “The combination of expertise and technology between Mobixell and 724 Solutions uniquely positions us to tackle this issue and allow mobile operators to improve the return on their infrastructure investment in the burgeoning mobile internet traffic, expected by industry specialists to grow 66 fold by 2013.”

“The synergy and potential offered by the combined strengths and skills of 724 Solutions and Mobixell will allow us to offer our customers, the mobile operators, a real triple play of benefits: the ability to differentiate themselves from competitors, the ability to cut data handling infrastructure costs and the ability to further monetize their existing assets with solutions, such as the advertising and location-based services,” said John Sims, the CEO of 724 Solutions. “Our existing customers and channel partners will continue to receive our full commitment — with a broader set of resources and value to meet their needs.”

The combined company will unveil the joint vision at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Feb. 15-18.

— Kelly Lazarus is the director of marketing for 724 Solutions.