Tata Teleservices has entered an exclusive partnership with Apalya to offer Asia Cup matches live to Tata Photon plus and Tata Docomo subscribers.
The ongoing Asia Cup 2010 is scheduled to end on June 24, and has cricket teams from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh participating in it.
Tata Photon Plus customers can access Asia Cup 2010 on their mobiles and laptops via Tata Photon TV. While laptop viewing users will be charged Rs five per match and Rs 25 for the full tournament, the Tata Photon TV service is available fee of cost on mobile phones. Tata Photon TV is available on limited handsets, namely LG 510, Samsung Corby, Samsung M519-Metro and BlackBerry 9630.
Tata Docomo users can access exclusive videos of Asia Cup 2010 using GPRS. For viewing videos, they can either opt for a live streaming service or download MiMobiTV. Subscribers need to pay browsing charges of one paisa per KB for home networks and ten paise per 10 KB while while on other networks. Users can also get Asia Cup 2010 updates on SMS, which is available in three packs, namely Daily pack at Rs five for every match, Weekly pack at Rs ten for seven days and Monthly pack at Rs 30 for 30 days. Users can also get daily match updates via voice at Rs five per match day.
The company has also partnered with Vuclip to offer Asia Cup 2010 video download. Its video portfolio includes match highlights, wickets, fours and sixes. Data charges as per the tariff plan of the user will apply.
Tata Indicom users also have access to a Football Fever application, which is downloadable from Tata Zone. The application offers football world cup updates, reviews and ratings on mobile phones. Subscribers will be charged Rs ten for a week to download the application while there are no charges for surfing the application. Users can also find wallpapers and the football anthem. The cost of various downloads range between Rs 10 to Rs 15.
Tala Teleservices streams Asia Cup to mobiles
30% youth on social networking use mobile internet: survey
A social media survey conducted by Indiabiz News and Research Services (INRS), reveals that around 30 per cent of India’s young social networkers access networking sites from their mobile phones. The survey covered a base of 350 respondents in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. Facebook claimed the top spot in terms of usage. The survey also revealed that the popularity of micro-blogging sites, such as Twitter, is limited to celebrities while LinkedIn has a greater following. The votes in favour of LinkedIn (45.8 per cent) were much above those of both YouTube (36.5 per cent) and Twitter (29.6 per cent).
About 63 per cent of those who took the poll have never engaged with communities, groups and fan pages on networking sites. Among these, only 11 per cent join a networking site on the recommendation of their friends. About 37 per cent of respondents belong to the 26 to 30 years age group and almost 35 per cent of them were professionals with mid-level jobs.
Even as more and more people are joining the online networking space for professional reasons, the most dominant reason to join the club is to stay in touch with friends. Almost 90 per cent of users join such sites to follow or stay in touch with their friends, and nearly 80 per cent follow their friends for their pictures.
More than tweeting, blogging is becoming a popular choice among thinkers and debaters. A large number of users (45 per cent) are reading or writing blogs to express ideas and opinions. The top five categories of blogs are entertainment, current affairs, personal, fashion and technology, in ascending order.
Indiabiz News & Research Services (INRS) is a content service company that runs a news website. The company is headquartered in New Delhi.
Infibeam forays into mobile handset business
The latest player to enter the Indian mobile handset market is the e-commerce retail company Infibeam. The company has announced that it has entered a design and manufacturing alliance with a global mobile phone manufacturer. However, the manufacturer’s name has not been revealed yet.
Vishal Mehta, chief executive officer and founder, Infibeam.com, said in the company statement, “The company targets to scale up its handset sales by introducing models with applications that are well suited to offer these services to Indian consumers at competitive pricing.”
The company has already launched three models I666, I5000 and I500. I666 comes with a QWERTY keyboard and G-Sensor, while I5000 is a flip phone. The third phone, I500, is a touchscreen device.
Infibeam is looking to tie-up with consumer brands in India and to provide content services and applications.
Infibeam operates an e-commerce retail portal www.infibeam.com, along with www.picsquare.com. The company also provides e-commerce and marketing services to brands, retailers and media companies internationally and in India.
Bay Talkitec, MTNL tie up for 3G VAS
Bay Talkitec, a Chennai-based 3G mobile value added services (VAS) and applications company, has announced that its VAS delivery platform and applications have been deployed by MTNL in Mumbai and Delhi circles for 3G VAS roll out. Telecom Yatra had first reported this in November last year when Bay Talkitec had plans to tie up with MTNL by 2009 end.
Currently, 3G services such as video SMS, video conferencing, YouTube upload, mobile TV and video on demand are available in the country.
T Hariraj, senior vice president, sales and marketing, Bay Talkitec, said in a statement, “Being a user friendly and highly accessible platform, our 3G VAS solution will enable MTNL to grow their subscriber base and significantly increase their VAS revenues. We are also looking to launch more innovative 3G applications like video ring back tone, video greetings, mobile video yellow pages and video juke box in the near future on the same platform.”
Founded in 1991, Bay Talkitec provides technology and services through interactive voice response systems, voice technology, unified communications, video gateway, 3G video enabled solutions, mobile VAS etc. It has presence in Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai in India, besides Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal and the USA.
RCom introduces mobile internet access at Rs 99
Reliance Communications has announced a new plan MobileNet, which offers internet access, without any time limit, for a monthly recharge of Rs 99. This plan is available to new and existing, postpaid and prepaid subscribers of RCom’s GSM service. However, free internet access is capped at 2.5 GB per month, beyond which usage charges of 10 paise per 10Kb will apply.
The plan is an initiative from the company to create a platform for the roll-out of 3G services in the country and will allow customers access to social networking sites, instant Messaging applications, chat services and email accounts like yahoo, gmail and hotmail. They will also be able to download free multimedia content.
Mahesh Prasad, president, marketing, wireless business, Reliance Communications, said in a company statement, “An environment that facilitates large scale mobile internet usage is key to the success of 3G in India. Through our special MobileNet plan, we are gearing up to create an enabling infrastructure that will allow customers to seamlessly adopt 3G services on the move in India.”
RCom is licensed to offer 3G services in 13 Indian circles including Mumbai and Delhi.
The operator expects the GSM business to make significant contribution to its Mobile Data revenue and usage, stated the press release. RCom has also bundled free access to its VAS platform R-World, as well as free multimedia content worth Rs 99 along with the MobileNet plan, for its prepaid customers.
Other internet plans offered by RCom include Day Pass @ Rs 5, Weekly Pass @ Rs 29 and Fortnight Pass @ Rs 51.
GSM subscriber base reached 444 mn in May: COAI
As per figures released by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) on GSM subscribers for May, about 11 million new subscribers were added in the month, taking the GSM subscriber base to 444 million.
The figures also show that Uninor, a relatively new telecom operator in the industry, has reduced more than 8,000 subscribers in the month of May. According to a press statement released by Uninor today, “Uninor has declared a subscriber base of 5.01 million as of end of May. This is lower than the subscriber numbers reported for April by 8,722, resulting from the purging of data pertaining to inactive SIMs from the overall subscriber count. Inactive SIMs have been defined as those where no call, SMS, data usage or recharge activity has occurred over the past 60 days.”
In May, maximum new subscribers were added from circle B at 4.4 million. Circle A registered about 3.3 million additions, followed by circle C at 1.9 million and metros at 1.7 million.
According to COAI, UP (East) registered the maximum additional subscribers at almost 1.4 million. This was followed by Tamil Nadu (excluding Chennai) with over 950,000 additions, Andhra Pradesh with over 830,000 new subscribers, Mumbai with 780,000 and Bihar with 7.5 new subscribers.
Among operators, Bharti Airtel, with an additional three million subscribers, remained on top with a total subscriber base of about 133 million. Vodafone registered over 2.6 million new subscribers, followed by Aircel at 1.6 million, Idea Cellular at 1.4 million and BSNL at one million new subscribers.
New entrants, S Tel and Etisalat DB added over 120,000 and 5,000 subscribers respectively.
According to TRAI, circle A consists of Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu (including Chennai), Maharashtra and Goa. Circle B comprises Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West), West Bengal, Sikkim and Lakshadweep. Circle C comprises Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Assam, the North East, Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. The metros are Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.
vRock Mobile partners with Nimbus; plans voice blogging
Value added services provider vRock Mobile on Tuesday announced that it has bagged mobile rights for the forthcoming Asia Cup cricket tournament. The Asia Cup is scheduled to take place in Sri Lanka from June 15 to 24, and will have cricket teams from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh participating in it.
The company has signed an agreement with broadcaster Nimbus Sports for providing score alerts via SMS, video streaming, video clips, interactive voice response etc.
vRock has already roped in telcos such as BSNL, MTNL, Aircel, Tata Indicom and Tata Docomo for providing services to their subscribers. Jatin Ahluwalia, chief executive officer, vRock Mobile Communications, told Telecom Yatra that they are in discussions with other leading mobile operators and are awaiting responses from Airtel, Idea and Vodafone. vRock has the rights to the Asia Cup for the next two seasons till 2014. This is vRock’s second deal, the first being the five year contract with IPL for matches.
Ahluwalia says that though they are laying strong emphasis on sports right now, they plan to introduce lifestyle events.
vRock has also partnered with technology company Vuclip to power its mobile video search and UTV Indiagames for developing mobile games based on the Asia Cup.
Taking about services to be launched in the near future, Ahluwalia said, “We are going to launch our viral communication service. It would include value added voice services like voice blogging. We have partnered with Bubble Motion for this service. The service should be launched in the next quarter.”
Bubble Motion is a global provider of mobile Messaging and social media applications. It offers services like BubbleTalk, a personal voice messaging service, Bubbly, a voice-based social networking service and BubbleCast, an audio content broadcasting service.
Although the company will continue offering services via network services providers, it plans to have a direct consumer portal as well.
Videocon Mobile Services launches unlimited internet pack
Videocon Mobile Services has announced the launch of an internet plan which offers limitless browsing. The service is available at a monthly recharge of Rs 96.
As of now the offer can be availed by Videocon GSM prepaid customers in Mumbai, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Haryana.
The base of mobile internet users in India has grown 245 per cent since 2008, highlighting the rapid growth of data users on mobile service networks, stated a company release.
The GPRS services works on its 2.75 EDGE GSM network.
Videocon Mobile services are currently available Tamil Nadu, Mumbai, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Kerala.
Zen Mobile appoints Amitabh Bachchan as brand ambassador
The 10-month-old mobile brand, Zen Mobile, has appointed one of the oldest stars in Bollywood — Amitabh Bachchan — as its brand ambassador.
The company signed the veteran actor, as he fit the bill in terms of values and qualities the brand represents. “We want to be perceived as a company that offers quality products which are also durable; and we found those qualities in Bachchan. He is a person who is known for his quality, long-term commitment and has stayed over the years,” Deepesh Gupta, MD, Zen Mobiles tells afaqs!.
The company’s primary target is users in tier 2 and 3 cities. Gupta adds that associating with Bachchan would help the company create a deep impact in the minds of its target audience, and help the brand and its products meet success.
The company plans to leverage its association with Bachchan through a media campaign, comprising print, TV, radio and BTL, with focus on print and TV. The campaign is expected to be on-air in about two months. Bates 141 is Zen Mobile’s creative agency.
The company has a marketing budget of Rs 25-30 crore for the year and expects a turnover of about Rs 800 crore. It plans to sell about 4 lakh handsets in a month, whose prices range between Rs 1,400-7,000.
Zen Mobile is geared up to launch a slew of QWERTY and multimedia feature-rich mobile handsets, loaded with social networking experience, at an affordable price for the Indian market. The current focus of the company is to provide high-quality, touch-screen phones with high-end multimedia features.
Founded in September 2009, Zen Mobile is a sister concern of the Telecare group, which has 15 years of experience in managing and distributing various first-tier mobile brands.
Bachchan’s brand endorsements include Pepsi, ICICI, Parker, Cadbury, Nerolac, Reid & Taylor, Dabur Hajmola, Rin, Himani Fast Relief, Navratna, Emami Boroplus and Eveready.
TTSL crosses 70 million subscribers mark
Tata Teleservices (TTSL) added 2.33 million new subscribers in the month of May to take its subscriber base past the 70 million mark. The company claims it has achieved the landmark in just over five years of the launch of its mobile telephony services.
The company stated that it has seen record subscriber growth rate of over 100 per cent in the last 12 months. TTSL recorded a subscriber base of 35 million in May 2009.
Anil Sardana, managing director, Tata Teleservices, said in a statement, “With the countdown on 3G services having begun, we will continue to walk the innovation path, providing our customers with differentiated products and services which will take telecom to the next level. We are working closely on the creation of such relevant products with our partners, particularly NTT Docomo, which is acknowledged as the world leader in telecom technology development, and we look forward to the next wave in Indian telecom.”
In India, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance Communications have crossed the 100 million subscriber mark. The first operator to achieve the benchmark in India was Bharti Airtel, which counted 100 million wireless subscribers in May 2009. Reliance Communications achieved his in March while Vodafone Essar announced the same in April.