MSN has extended its mobile service offering in India to five more networks though a partnership with Mobile 365. These five mobile operators include Reliance Infocomm entities - Reliance IndiaMobile (RIM) and Reliance GSM, with a total of over 15 million CDMA and GSM subscribers; Tata Teleservices, one of India's premier mobile and fixed service providers present in over 1,400 towns across 20 circles of the country, with over 7 million CDMA subscribers; and Spice Punjab and Spice Karnataka, both entities of Spice Telecom, which combined have more than 1.5 million GSM subscribers.
Under the agreements, users of MSN Hotmail will have the option to receive email sent to their MSN Hotmail accounts via SMS on their mobile phones. They will also be able to reply to those email messages directly to the sender's inbox using SMS, as well as perform other common tasks directly from their phone.
"Operators in India are constantly scouting for new mobile content and applications to satisfy the increasing needs of subscribers for timely information and entertainment. People of various demographics use MSN Hotmail and Messenger to do just that- communicate daily with friends, family, and colleagues around the world using MSN Hotmail/Messenger as a platform for entertainment and information exchange. MSN and Mobile 365 bring the highly popular MSN Messenger/Hotmail access through SMS to give customers a new avenue of freedom, interaction, and mobility," said Rohit Dadwal, Head, Communication Service, MSN South Asia. "The MSN Messenger/Hotmail service via SMS is currently available to 70% of the Indian mobile user base. MSN and Mobile 365 expect to expand the service to cover 100% of the Indian mobile market very soon."
The "MSN Messenger over SMS" service is also a form of two-way SMS, enabling users and their MSN Messenger buddies to keep in touch with each other at any time via a PC and any mobile phone that supports SMS technology.
When a user is logged on to MSN Messenger on a PC, he/she can keep in touch with family and friends via their mobile phone simply by creating and saving a mobile MSN Messenger number for each of their buddies.
According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in June 2005, there were about 57.4 million mobile subscribers. The market is expected to burgeon to around 200 million subscribers by 2008.
In December 2004, MSN India and Mobile 365 forged similar mobile alliances with Airtel, India's leading mobile service with a strong footprint in 20 states in the country and BPL Mobile, India's best and most trusted mobile phone service provider, to enable their subscribers to access their Hotmail emails and chat with their MSN buddies on SMS anywhere, anytime. In February 2005, MSN India also launched MSN Hotmail and Messenger via two way SMS with Hutch, to its more than 9 million subscribers."
Posted to the site on 15th December 2005
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/15247.php