India has the world’s lowest call rate, that’s pretty much known now. So, service carriers are now banking on other services for revenues. Value Added Services or VAS, as they are known, now forms 10% of the operators revenues in India and is expected to reach to 18% by 2010. The Indian VAS market is supposed to hit $2billion by the end of 2008 (source: PricewaterhouseCoopers)

Airtel has been trying to increase the share of its VAS services. Its Airtel Live service, which offers a host of VAS features, is quite a hit with its subscribers. Now, Airtel has tied up with Nokia to embed the Airtel Live icon in its handsets, reports ET.

The icon will be visible on all the Nokia handsets in India, however, it will be inactive is there user is not an Airtel subscriber. There, the icon will be a tool for branding, says Airtel.

Bharti Airtel’s chief marketing officer (mobility) Sanjay Gupta told ET,

“We are exploring the option to tie up with handset vendors like Nokia to provide Airtel Live as an icon in a handset’s menu. Talks are at an early stage of discussion. The icon will be available in all handsets and hence will remain inactive if the consumer is not using an Airtel connection. It then also serves as a huge branding tool.”

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