wordpress blog stats
Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

On making Carrier Billing independent of Carriers in India

Google is apparently in talks with Bharti Airtel to allow purchase of goods and services from the Google Play store using carrier billing, reports The Economic Times. This is not surprising, but this is also not new. Back in 2012, K Srinivas, President (B2C) for Airtel, had told MediaNama that the company, which had partnered with what was then called Nokia, for what was then called the Ovi Store, was "...talking to Android, and whenever Apple wants to come around…" Talks, it would appear, have progressed at the speed of a stationary Formula 1 car. Srinivas was clear then that Airtel was more open to partnering with app stores than opening up its API to individual developers to integrate with. Airtel's stance on carrier billing might have changed since, especially since the relationship between Google and Airtel appears to have become stronger. Airtel, the most charitable among telecom operators, recently offered Google's Android One customers "100 MB of data per month for 6 months for software updates and 200 MB per month for 6 months for app downloads and updates on the first prepaid active Airtel SIM inserted in the Android One device." Airtel's Wynk app/service has carrier billing integrated for in-app purchases, even though Play store guidelines prohibit third party billing. But things change. In December last year, Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal had said the company would open up location and billing API in 3-5 months, in an "entrepreneur friendly way". In the meantime, India has seen a number of carrier billing operators…

Please subscribe/login to read the full story.
Written By

Founder @ MediaNama. TED Fellow. Asia21 Fellow @ Asia Society. Co-founder SaveTheInternet.in and Internet Freedom Foundation. Advisory board @ CyberBRICS

Free Reads

News

With GPS in every car, India's toll collection is going high-tech.

News

Google is currently undergoing the necessary procedures for the leasehold land, which is presently under the ownership of the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation.

News

The pilot project for which is being launched in 19 cities this year, with a plan to launch a full-fledged rollout next year.

MediaNama’s mission is to help build a digital ecosystem which is open, fair, global and competitive.

Views

News

NPCI CEO Dilip Asbe recently said that what is not written in regulations is a no-go for fintech entities. But following this advice could...

News

Notably, Indus Appstore will allow app developers to use third-party billing systems for in-app billing without having to pay any commission to Indus, a...

News

The existing commission-based model, which companies like Uber and Ola have used for a long time and still stick to, has received criticism from...

News

Factors like Indus not charging developers any commission for in-app payments and antitrust orders issued by India's competition regulator against Google could contribute to...

News

Is open-sourcing of AI, and the use cases that come with it, a good starting point to discuss the responsibility and liability of AI?...

You May Also Like

News

Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...

Advert

135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...

News

By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...

News

Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...

MediaNama is the premier source of information and analysis on Technology Policy in India. More about MediaNama, and contact information, here.

© 2008-2021 Mixed Bag Media Pvt. Ltd. Developed By PixelVJ

Subscribe to our daily newsletter
Name:*
Your email address:*
*
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide

© 2008-2021 Mixed Bag Media Pvt. Ltd. Developed By PixelVJ