Well it had to happen sooner or later given that telecom operators are known to play big daddy with services they dont like.
In this case Rajesh Jain has come out in the open about a issue with Airtel wherein Airtel has blocked Mytoday’s sms services on the grounds of the National Do-Not-Call (NDNC) rules.
So basically Airtel is asking Rajesh to go through 3.7 lakhs subscribers of Mytoday and remove the ones who are registered with the NDNC or.. Take a written approval by all those people saying that they would like to opt in to mytoday’s alerts.
According to Rajesh’s blog post the number of do not disturb users is about 10% of the 3.7 million users which is around 3 lakh! Now any normal person will tell you doing either of the above options isn’t a possibility for Mytoday.
So in essence the issue is at a deadlock as the only other option that Mytoday has is to go to TRAI and ask them to butt in and solve the issue. Unfortunately for Mytoday TRAI has stated that this is an operator and service provider issue in short sort the matter among yourself. Rajesh has also made a presentation on the difference between NDNC and Optin.
All in all this isn’t only a bad sign for MYtoday its a sign of the things to come for VAS players in the future. It well and truly seems that the big boys of the telecom world are here to play hard ball the hard way when it comes to revenue. After all an ad revenue on Mytoday wont be shared with telecom operators and suppose telecom operators start a similar service tomorrow by tying up with a news channel or content providers its highly likely that they would block services that are competition. This could be for anything ranging from local search on mobile thats been launched recently to even video on mobile.
After all the operator does get the fact that VAS will be a big revenue driver for the telecom space tomorrow and it makes sense for them to have an upper hand on the content providers to keep their interest intact.
There is no logic behind the Airtel’s move to block MyToday.
One thing should be kept in mind for Airtel before they take up this move, all MyToday subscribers are SUBSCRIBERS BY WISH AND NOT BY FORCE. There is no highly irritative or unsolicited content. Even the commertial ads are less in case of MyToday. Airtel should understand this fact and take back their decision.
One more important thing is that MyToday is served by Airtel, Karnataka. If you check out the reverse lookup of the MyToday 10 digit number, its Airtel one…
Thanks for the insight Rajiv.
I used to work in an m-commerce company before. We had a mobile application, which used to communicate over GPRS. Airtel blocked our IP just because Airtel was promoting a similar concept on its WAP portal.
Finally, we got it opened after quite a bit of struggle.
Operators have to understand that the power of their network will be realized only if they make it an open garden like internet.
i agree with himanshu and rajiv
If i am an Airtel customer subcribing to Mytoday, i will file a suit against Airtel.. and enjoy the fun ..
Donty understand what you ppl are saying ” Airtel Plays Big Bad Operator – Blocks Mytoday’s Service ” I receive MYTODAY sms every day on my no. 9000x0000x here in Andhra Pradesh!
same is d case wid me.. even i reccive.. but i guess i wont be able to subscribe to any new swrvices frm now on..
Thanks guys , we came to know what the real matter is…
thanks guys…. Take care lol