Even though voice based VAS requires more effort to be expended by telecom operators, voice VAS generates more revenues than text-based ones. (Call charge is Rs. 7/min and SMS charge is Rs. 3/min). Thus, MVAS players are losing a major base of consumers owing to lack of vernacular service to cater to the rural lot.

It is obvious that personal computers (PC) won’t be able to scale in rural sector as that of mobile phones, in terms of mobility.

Shivkumar Jagannath, CTO, Verity Technology, says: “Bluetooth driven piracy and sites like www.zedeg.net are providing a killer blow to wall paper and ringtone downloads, lack of differentiator in content, too much focus on bollywood and cricket, very little investment on technology enabler for a richer experience are the few issues that VAS segment face,” says Shivkumar.

Again, lack of authentication and copyright standards, set by TRAI, on operators or aggregators regarding download is also hampering the situation.

Pankaj Sethi, says: “With other operators, VAS share of revenue has seen a flat trend, as new incremental customers are added. This is worrisome to an extent.”

With too many contenders for the small pie (Sports, alerts, ringtones and music), “The competition is becoming very tough because the margins we deal with are small and we are a part of the value chain. Moreover, very little customer feedback flows back to us”, Shivkumar adds.

“We have a very negligible share of VAS revenues, maybe a one percent or so. We hope this to close to two percent by the end of the year.”

On the other hand, low speed GPRS speed (126 kbps) and connectivity; low awareness in accessing latest technologies is a big blow for the traction of M-Commerce.

Debasis Chatterji, director - operations, Netxcells, says: “Mobile marketing model is nascent in India. There arise the issue of subscriber’s receptiveness and privacy. Advertisers don’t want to cut print /TV ad budget for mobile and agencies are yet to adopt this new channel owing to lack of familiarity.”