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It seems that every Indian is trying to grab a mobile phone leading to a humongous requirement of new mobile numbers. Mobile numbers starting with 9 have come to an end and DoT has given permission to telecom companies to allocate new numbers starting with 8. According to TRAI, India has 415 million cellular subscribers [...]

This is so because the myriad cultures in India find its definition in the music that they play. They carve a special identity not only for themselves as folk genres but also for the people there. And we all know how much of a social part regional and linguistic identity plays in today’s India (sons of the soil anyone?). These music based services will obviously be used as caller tunes, message and ring tones, etc. One doesn’t need a hypothesis and prood to see that the reason CRBTs have worked is not just because peoplelove music but they find it identity defining. And in that context Idea already has a winner on its hand.

It seems TRAI wants to leave no stone unturned for smooth implementation of Mobile Number Portability in India. It has therefore issued a draft legislation to clear the uncertainty surrounding the introduction of mobile number portability.
The draft guidelines describes the rights, obligations and duties of both the telecom operators in consideration for [...]

Reliance Communications is on a roll when it comes to VAS and VAS related initiatives. They have recently announced their intention to launch mobile Tv offerings for their newly launched GSM Network. RCom is reportedly in advanced stages of discussions for an alliance with Apalya Technologies to offer mobile television (MobiTV) on its network.

We want to contribute to the growth of these mobile applications, which is why we’re happy to announce our beta launch of AdSense for Mobile Applications. And so saying Adsense has sort of opened gates for a mini revolution of sorts in the mobile applications field. It’s a revolution for not many reasons and it is mini for a whole lot more, nevertheless it is an important step.

Idea has launched a new initiative in a bid to go viral on the web with a character based animation. Based on a Bengali character which eerily resembles Kishore Kumar in Padosan (then again which stereotyped bengali character doesn’t), Idea has launched a Microsite called - DadakiDuvidha.com. This is Idea’s attempt to promote its entry into the eastern circle and this particular viral is targeting Orissa.

You are probably reading it here first - Airtel is the official carrier of Boku, the mobile payments service in India. Airtel users can now use the application to make payments online through their mobile phone.

All the popular blogs on the web are abuzz with Boku’s launch. The much hyped mico payment solutions is certainly living up to it with its forcasted reach. Boku will put 1.63 billion people across as many as 53 countries as potential customers on the web. It has basically done away with the need to own a credit card to make payments online, and fills a relatively large gap by doing so.

Mobile content and MVAS has been amongst the most spoken about topics on WATBlog. While a lot of new innovations has happened and a lot of models tried, there is a general feeling among those who monitor this space that voice based content/data is the best way to tap into the potential of this space (CBRT, RingTones, IVRS, etc.). Now on similar lines UTV is bringing its movie content on to mobile.

Keeping up with the innovations in the mobile platform, SEBI has now issued a draft model to enable stock trading via mobile phones. This draft model when accepted would allow mobile users to initiate trading on their cell phones in a huge way.
SEBI guidelines already allows Internet trading through web sites and trading terminals provided [...]

mKhoj has announced the ability to power relevant mobile advertising tailored to local languages in seventeen different countries. With this announcement, mobile advertisers can leverage mKhoj’s ad network to display ads in hundreds of languages, including Afrikaans, Arabic, Bahasa, Hindi, Tamil, Turkic, and Zulu. In essence, these new advertising units, which target the exact location of an ad and serve it in the corresponding local language of that region.

In line with this thought, Yahoo has announced that is now shopping for newer features and better tools to integrate into its product portfolio. It had earlier discarded some incumbent products like Geocities earlier this year, and with Jerry Yang stepping down they clearly are on the lookout for some freshness in their now stale system.

Since the first release of Android, Google’s Linux based OS stack,T-mobile alone, the first to get into the market with an android phone G1 sold 1 million devices, now The Open Handset Alliance,the developer of the Android has released newer version of the OS stack The Cupcake boasting a range of new features including

I am of course talking about the call me campaign by Axe that they launched some while back. The campaign which essentially revolved around the number 09987333333. All ads in all media pointing to girls giving out this number to guys. More importantly for us, the campaigns also promoted an interactive IVRS on this number to set a wake up service. And the numbers above is for this mobile enabled engagement that took place.

And the monthly speculation has given way to specific dates now. I just saw these details on a Rediff peice on MNP -

Consumers may not have to pay more than Rs 300 to change from one mobile service provider to another while keeping the phone number intact, a facility likely to start from September 20.

After a few weeks of heavy advertising and promotions, Aircel finally set its shop in Mumbai. Along with vodafone, Airtel, Idea, Loop, Reliance and Tata, Aircel is now the seventh service provider in the spectrum. On the launch, Gurdeep Singh, COO, Aircel, said, “The opportunity for a seventh player to come from behind is to not be a one-sided heavily loaded but to provide a composite bouquet so one is deep understanding of consumer, segmenting them very well and putting a 360 degree around the product and the proposition offered to them.”