In Part 1 of this two part interview series, we spoke with Atul Bindal, President, Mobile Services for Bharti Airtel, on data trends since the company launched 3G services, their approach to 3G in terms of on-deck versus off-deck, and 4G-LTE. In Part 2, we spoke with Bindal on bundling services, whether Airtel will look at exclusive content (say exclusive live streaming for a Cricket Tournament on 3G), OEM App Stores and telco billing. MediaNama: The Ecosystem outside the walled garden is primarily English, what do you do for increasing data consumption among the regional markets? Atul Bindal: Thats a great question. Today we have a lot of development effort which is going on. Not just inside the company but working with individual small developers and firms, all about developing vernacular content. Even on app store,if you see, what the world knows is 100,000 + apps, 1.3 million downloads. What is the lesser known fact is that it is not the largest of the cities which are driving app store consumption; it is the likes of the hinterlands of Bihar and UP. They are not downloading English apps. They are downloading entertainment, Eductaion and productivity apps which are very bandwidth hogging and work well on Edge/GPRS. And, they have local language content. That needs to grow at a phenomenal pace. We have just started scratching the surface there. It's almost like a tipping point: things are beginning to happen (i.e. 3G), and this would actually start promoting the creation of…
