Mumbai, May 3: The mobile phone service sector is about to witness evenmore fierce competition than it has, in terms of services and technology. Asthe sector grows on a steady path, the industry realises the need foradditional and high value-added services to lure customers. With 3,50,000subscribers across 175 markets in India, BPL Mobile Communications is surelyon the hot seat. It is `technology next or never' for them. Recently, thecompany introduced transactional mobile commerce based on WAP and GPRS. Itschief executive officer AP Parigi spoke to eFE on somecritical issues. Excerpts:What are the current technologies that you focus on?
We have recently launched transactional mobile banking is association withCitibank. This service offers mobile banking services such as checkingaccount balances, retrieve information on payments and getting details oflatest transactions.
This service is a mixture of two advanced technologies, WAP or WirelessApplication Protocol and general packet radio service or GPRS. We hadalready introduced services like e-mail and Intelligent Networks.
How do you plan to stay ahead of the competition?
This month and June will be eventful for us. We plan to introduce a new andexciting Internet-related service in our service areas. There will be acomplete integration of voice and data. This could be a second round of ourmobile commerce announced earlier with the Citibank. The new service willfocus on an entirely new delivery channel for various e-services.
We also plan to launch several new products in all new mediums. In fact, wehave been staying ahead of the competition through such services and arelooking at newer technologies to deliver more. Essentially, we thrive on thefirst-mover advantage.
The group focus on a long term basis continues to be on the convergenttechnologies. The thrust is now on the South-West markets of the country.
What are the current issues in the mobile telecom sector?
The NTP of 1999 was a welcome policy as it promised to solve most of theissues. The budget too proved interesting as it went on to drasticallyreduce the duty on mobile handsets and thus generating more demand for theservice.
However, we are disappointed with the revenue sharing agreement that hasbeen worked out. The current duty structure has to reviewed and brought downso that the industry can put itself on the high growth path. The duties arevery high in India on the mobile industry compared to the West.
We also feel that the calling party pays or CPP regime must happen. The newTRAI and its dispute settlement body abode well for the industry.
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