Bharti launches SMS for landline phones

NEW DELHI: Bharti’s two subsidiaries–Bharti Telesoft and Bharti Teletech have jointly announced India’s first SMS solution for fixed-line platform. Bharti Teletech will be launching feature phones supporting SMS and Bharti Telesoft will be providing the software interface, scalable for inter-operator compatibility.

This software, once implemented by the basic telephony operators, will make India one of the fixed line SMS enabled countries. Right now there are around 12 other countries with such a feature, in which Italy was the first one in 2000.

“This joint initiative will now ensure a large section of India’s population get full spectrum of value added services. Fixed line SMS will boost up the total traffic of SMS too across the nation”, said Bharti Teletech Vice Chairman and MD Rakesh Bharti Mittal.

Elaborating on the software platform and the investments, Bharti Telesoft CEO Sanjiv Mittal said, “We have provided basic telephony operators with a software platform that would open up a new revenue stream and boost up the SMS traffic for that particular operator. The initial investment would be anywhere between $ 200,000 to $ three million -$ four million by the operator depending on the quantum of subscriber.” When asked about the immediate response for this product, he added that the company has already picked up an order from Sri Lanka and is expecting similar response from Middle East too.

Bharti Teletech CEO Pawan Kapur said, “We would provide the hardware for this service under the Beetel brand. Our endeavor has been to provide technically advanced products in India and we would be the first in India to provide SMS enabled phones.” Right now Bharti Teletech has engaged a captive production unit in China, until India reaches threshhold number sustainable for production in India.

When asked about the introduction of this service by Touchtel and pricing of the SMS service for the subscriber, Rakesh Bharti Mittal said that market forces would define the pricing strategy. To start with, there will be a 160-character limit for the SMS but this will gradually increase in the future to 640 characters. In the near future, he is looking at making inroads in India with this product and waiting for operator’s responses. The tentative pricing for a SMS featured phone will be Rs 2,100 approximately.

(CNS)