Vodafone Launches Kirusa’s Voice SMS; Some Thoughts On Voice SMS

Vodafone has announced the launch of its Voice SMS service in 16 circles with Kirusa. What’s interesting from a marketing point of view, is that Airtel has been promoting its Voice SMS service, powered by Bubble Motion for a few weeks now, and Vodafone will be able to take advantage of that buzz now. What we’re not sure of, is whether Vodafone is deploying the Voice SMS service in one shot, or like Airtel, has been deploying the service circle by circle. Airtel first began deploying Bubble Talk in 2006, in Goa and Maharashtra.

Both companies have priced the service at Rs. 0.75 per minute, and it is available to both Prepaid and Postpaid subscribers. Details of how Vodafones service works:

– Does not require any special handsets, or handset settings
– Vodafone subscribers have to dial* and the mobile number of the person for sending the message.
– If the recipient is a Vodafone subscriber, he will receive a text SMS notification and can dial *0* to hear the Voice SMS.
– Old Voice SMS can be retrieved by dialing *1*.
– Users can replying, forwarding, saving or deleting the Voice SMS messages.
– Subscribers not on the Vodafone network will get a text SMS notification with an embedded DirectListen number

An issue for Airtel: Twice in the last 30 minutes, I’ve been unable to send a voice SMS since “All lines are currently busy”. Looks like they don’t have enough capacity for the service.

Some thoughts on Voice SMS (more…)

Q2-09: Bharti Airtel Monthly VAS Revenues At Rs. 259.55 Crores; Non-SMS VAS At 57%

Bharti Airtel has reported net profits (consolidated) of Rs. 2046 crores, up 1.05 percent since the last quarter, and 27 percent from Q208. Total revenues for the quarter were Rs. 9020 crores, up 6.33 percent since the last quarter, and 42 percent year-on-year. The company reported an EBITDA growth of 5.03 percent quarter on quarter, and 37 percent year on year. We’ve put together a quarter-on-quarter snapshot for you to compare their performance. For the year-on-year performance, please refer to the financials linked to below.

VAS Revenues & ARPU

Airtel has reported a decline in ARPU for the quarter, and as per our calculations, on the VAS front, the company earned Rs. 259.55 crores, up from Rs. 235.55 crores last quarter. At the same time, the contribution of Value Added Services (VAS) has increased to 10 percent of ARPU, and as per our calculations, the contribution of data services continues to increase, albeit marginally, to 57% of VAS APRU, up from 56.7% last quarter.

In absolute terms, non-SMS VAS, which includes Voice, Internet (WAP), Gaming, Music (Ring-Back Tones) etc, has grown from Rs. 133.56 crores per month to Rs. 147.94 crores per month, for the quarter.

Subscriber Addition, Minutes Of Use & Churn

Airtel’s subscriber base was up 12% quarter on quarter to 77.4 million, with net monthly additions at 2.698 million subscribers per month. 98.4 percent of the new additions were prepaid. Minutes of use per subscriber went up marginally from 534 minutes to 536 minutes. Interestingly, pre-paid churn declined to 3.1% from 3.8% last quarter, while post-paid churn increased marginally from 1% to 1.1%.

Mobile Services: 77479215 up 12% from 69,384,000
Marketshare: 24.6%, with 28.5% of net additions
Prepaid: 92.9% of the total subscriber base, with 98.4% of  new additions
Churn: 3.2% Prepaid, and 1.1% post-paid
Minutes of Use: 536 up from 534
Distribution Channel: 1,008,031 outlets.

Telemedia Services

Airtel Telemedia, which consists of their Broadband and wireline business, has a total subscriber base of 2,509,460 customers, which is up 5% from 2,393,732 subscribers last quarter. They added around 116,000 subscribers wireline subscribers, and reported an ARPU of Rs. 1147, up 1 percent from

Airtel has around 9.2 lakh broadband subscribers, 36.7% percent of wireline subscribers. Broadband subscribers up 7.96% from 8.53 lakh last quarter. Airtels wireline services are available in 95 cities. According to the company, their strategy for broadband is to focus on the city, while they’ve taken a pan-India approach to DTH.

Note: The next quarter should give indications of the impact of the launch of DTH services on Bharti Telemedia. More on the launch of DTH services here.

Q209: Release, Financials, Quarterly Report,

Q1-09: Release, Quarterly Report | Analysis/Report
Articles related to Bharti Airtel

Airtel Does It Again…

Well, Bharti Airtel certainly needs to get its act together. For the second month in a row, I’ve been billed for content that I did not download. Yesterday, while at Barcamp Delhi, I got the following message:

“Thanks for downloading Animation from Airtel Live WAP Service. You’ve been charged Rs. 15. Game: http://10.5.45.107/w?sId=004″

Again, I don’t browse Airtel Live (the portal), nor have I downloaded any game or animation. The same thing happened to me last month, and to be honest, I forgot to get it removed from my bill.

Anyway, if it happens once, I can take it as a mistake. Twice…I don’t think so. This time around, I’m going to contact the nodal officer, the procedure for filing complaints had been outlined by Deva5 in the comments to the post on the earlier incident.

In case of any wrongly billed scenarios, process you should follow:

1) Call the call center ask him to raise your complaint. In case of postpaid he will not know the exact detail of your charge until post the bill run(Billing date). Prepaid they shall know in 24 hrs. Please ask for your complaint number + SR (Service Request) number for the bill adjustments. Note them down.
2) With this number email your nodal officer .Ask him to check such things are not repeated. and ensure that bill adjustments happen on this particular complaint. For Delhi circle Airtel Nodal officer details as below
Ph: 9818334865
Fax: 9810409104
e-mail - nodalofficer.del@airtel.in
It is mandated by TRAI that nodal officer respond to all customer complaints and his details published to public , approach Apellate authority in case of no response.
In case you’re not happy you may approach the TRAI consumer officer for circle.

3) This adjustment may be made to your next bill

Related: So This Is How Mobile Content Makes Money?

Services On Airtel DTH: Indiatimes Shopping, MakeMyTrip, WorldSpace, MapUnity, AskLaila, StarsTell

Internet companies feature prominently on Airtel Digital TV (DTH), and services appears to be a significant differentiator for Airtel. Some of the content and media services on offer:

- iAstro: powered by StarsTell, a services from WorldPhone, a VoIP player which is a part of Times Private Treaties (screencap)
- iCity: has two components. The Maps are powered by MapUnity, and the estimations of traffic are a function of the number of mobile phones on a particular road. The other component is local business information (restaurants) and events, being powered by AskLaila. . Screencaps: Mapunity 1, Mapunity 2 , Asklaila
- iLearn: is being powered by Edurite, and developed by Infosys (screencap)
- iMatinee: powered by BookMyShow, a Web18 site
- iNet: isn’t really Internet access on the mobile, but actually widgets which you can place on your TV screen. Widgets cover sports, news, stocks, a world time clock. The data is refreshed real time. (screencap)
- iShop: powered by Indiatimes
- iTravel: travel packages are powered by MakeMyTrip. You can’t book a ticket, but you can SMS a package to a number, and MMT will call back to close the deal. (screencap)
- Games: provided by NDS. The content will be refreshed on a regular basis.
- Worldspace: 10 Wordspace radio channels are available for free. (screencap)

The deals are essentially on revenue share. As far as the customer is concerned, depending on the package he opts for, he’ll get access to an application.

What’s interesting is that there’s a section called “Airtel Live”, like in case of the mobile WAP deck. Some of the services on offer on Airtel Live are free, while others are paid. As far as services are concerned, Airtel appears to be taking the mobile approach to DTH, where they will provide TV channels, and then bundle in other services that users can subscribe pay for.

More on IPTV and Airtels strategy, and slides from their presentation:

(more…)

Telecom Operators Outsource Game Deck Management…Finally

Update: An clarification from Real Networks. We’re told that Indiagames is adivising them on game deck management as a significant content provider, and not managing the network itself. The error is regretted:

“We take this opportunity to  refer to your article in “MediaNama regarding Management of Game section in Airtel Live Portal. Please note that RealNetworks has been managing the Airtel Live portal since almost three years now and currently have a contract dated February 29^th 2008 with Airtel to manage the entire Airtel Live portal against certain revenue share. Indiagames is one of the content providers who are providing gaming contents, like over 50 CPs who are providing the contents to various sections/categories in Airtel Live WAP portal. The actual content placement and management is done by our team based in Gurgaon. This is an expert area and RealNetworks has many global references where we have similar arrangement with operators (refer attached list). RealNetworks is a global leader in digital entertainment including mobile VAS and has many patent related to mobile VAS.”

Original story:

Indiagames is managing the Airtel Live game deck
Another indication of the trend that Indian mobile operators are loosening their hold over mobile data services: MediaNama has learned from reliable, industry sources that UTV owned Indiagames has been managing Airtel’s game deck for the last 3 months. We’re also told that gaming has become the largest contributor to revenues from the on-deck portal Airtel Live. However, it’s important to note that Caller RingBack Tones (CRBTs) are not a part of Airtel Live.

A “game deck” is essentially the catalogue of games that are displayed to the consumer on a WAP portal. Consumers tend not to dig too deep when accessing game decks, so deck management - choosing which games to display on the first few pages, is key to sales.

We contacted Samir Bangara, COO of Indiagames, who declined to confirm or deny the news, saying only that “Airtel is a key account for Indiagames, and we continue to find various ways of working strategically with them”. We’re also awaiting a response from Airtel.

Indiagames is both a games publisher and a distributor in India, so there could be a conflict of interest there, particularly when other game publishers are involved. Last year, at a NASSCOM Animation and Gaming panel on mobile gaming that I had moderated, Bangara had mentioned that Indiagames is working on a Games On Demand (subscription) service for the mobile. That hasn’t been launched yet, and I wonder if this is a precursor to the launch of that service.

End2End Mobile To Manage Vodafone India’s Game Deck?
We’ve also learned that End2End Mobile will be managing the game deck for Vodafone in India. End2End, rather MACH India, is operating out of Hyderabad and Bangalore. The service isn’t live yet. We’ve written to them, and are awaiting a response. According to their website, End2End Content Services “specialises in running content retail portals for mobile operators, portals and content providers.” Vodafone is one of their more significant customers, with deals in New Zealand, Turkey and Egypt.

What about RCOM?
All said and done, it’s good to see operators outsourcing their game deck management - something, for which they had been criticized, though not openly, by gaming companies. Games aren’t exactly ringtones and ringback tones, which enjoy marketing support, and gaming companies will invariably have a better understanding of gameplay, and which games work, and which don’t. At the same time, there’s a risk that if a publisher manages a game deck, he might push his own games.

At the same NASSCOM conference, Krishna Durbha, Head VAS, Business & Marketing for RCOM had invited gaming companies to manage RCOM game decks…I wonder if any gaming companies approached KD regarding the game deck management, and whether he followed through…

Bharatmatrimony Launched On Airtel Live

Bharatmatrimony.com has become the second matrimonial portal to in a mobile operator tie-up, after Shaadi.com launched a host of services with Vodafone launched last month. Bharatmatrimony is offering Airtel customers matrimonial subscription services at Rs. 20 per week, which gives them access to an additional contact.

While the type of services are rather limited, this deal appears to be better than the one that Shaadi is offering Vodafone customers:

But does the price difference really matter?
I don’t think it does. Not many mobile subscribers will be using both Vodafone and Airtel, and selection of an operator is not likely to be determined by which matrimonial service they are providing.

This is more of a distribution deal for Shaadi and BM, and primarily a means of acquiring new customers. A few months from now, we’ll check up with both Shaadi and Bharatmatrimony about usage trends - whether they’re acquiring new customers, or is the service being used by online users. Ideally, both services would like to be live across all mobile operators, and not the exclusive mandate of any one.

This is yet another bullet point in the one-upmanship game between Shaadi.com and Bharatmatrimony - both announced DTH launches earlier this year - Shaadi with Dish TV and Bharatmatrimony with Tata Sky.

Related:
- Shaadi.com & Vodafone Ink Revenue Share Deal For Matrimonial On WAP, Voice Portal & SMS
– Manorama Group Launches Matrimonial Site; Other Classifieds To Move To Verticals?
– Matrimonial Sites Ink DTH Deals - Shaadi-DishTV, Bharatmatrimony-Tata Sky

So This Is How Mobile Content Makes Money?

Sometime between 9:30pm and 10:30pm yesterday, I got the following message from Airtel:

Thanks for downloading JavaGame from Airtel Live WAP Service. You’ve been charged Rs. 50. MinishaImranSpl http://203.200.188.92/airtel/ozone/hthrobes

And I hadn’t downloaded any game. The message had been sent at 4:30 AM. The customer-care executive asked if I’d been using Airtel Live, and wouldn’t treat Airtel Live mobile Internet access separately from  Airtel Live (portal) access. I’ve been asked to wait till my next bill before they make the change, but then - how many people who face the same issue will remember to do that, or even go through their bill in detail?

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Upon signing up for SMS 2.0 (we reviewed their search here), I received a SMS push offering a FREE 30 day jokes pack. I haven’t signed up, but do operators stop these services after a month, or will they continue to offer the services, but at a charge? I’m sure it’ll take at least one instance of being billed before the consumer realizes she is being charged. This is how Ringbacktones also work - they’re offered free for the first month, and often users do not cancel the service until after being billed at least once.”VAS contribution to ARPU”, indeed.

Take a look at this comment someone left on a post, asking for a service we’ve written about to be deactivated.

I think the TRAI should step in here to ensure that when there is a price increase for a particular service, fresh approval should be taken from consumers. And some guidelines on paid subscription services.

Update

From Sony Joy: USSD alerts are something on similar lines. They publicize well how to activate it but know one knows how to unsubscribe! Neither do they get canceled on its own after X months. The rates vary from 30 to 99 per month.

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What other such practices have you experienced/noticed? Do tell and we’ll add to the post.