From Generation To Generation

The lure of 3G notwithstanding, telecom players have a long road ahead if they are to monetise it
That which is well built
will never be torn down.
That which is well latched
cannot slip away.
Those who do things well
will be honoured from generation to generation
Tao Te Ching
The auction of 3G or ‘third-generation’ spectrum has been followed up by the rollout of services that will enable the delivery of a range of next generation services — video streaming, movie downloads, video calls and so on. With as much as Rs 67,719 crore invested by operators in 3G spectrum, they are bound to follow Tao Te Ching’s wisdom in introducing 3G services in the market.

Bharti Airtel is using experiential marketing wherein it has several red-coloured “3G buses” on the move in major cities. Users can step into these buses and have a firsthand experience of 3G mobile services like mobile TV, video calls, high-speed downloads and so on. Its print and outdoor ad screams: ‘Airtel 3G is here’. Tata DoCoMo, known to have one of the largest footprint in retail stores amongst telecom operators, is turning thousands of its shops into “experience stores”. Consumers can walk in and experience services like video SMS, video streaming, mobile television, ultra-high-speed data transfers, route-finder, and live aarti. This assisted experiential marketing would help in making the millions who have not used GPRS yet more familiar with what 3G is all about.
Many of us are familiar by now with Superhero ZooZoo flying all over our TV screens. That was Vodafone’s 3G launch strategy, that is, use its much-appreciated TV ads to announce the introduction of 3G services in India. Superhero ZooZoo stands for the brand personality of 3G — Faster, smarter and better — and helps educate subscribers on this new technology in a simple manner. The different things Superhero ZooZoo does in the TVC indirectly point to the quality of the 3G network that Vodafone aspires to offer. Vodafone is also offering free time-bound 3G trial to its current GPRS subscribers. This not only serves the purpose of pre-purchase service trial but also provides Vodafone with valuable usage data from which it can infer which services are more sought after, how the data consumption is likely to change after mass introduction of 3G services and so on.
On the other hand, Reliance is focusing more on partnerships to offer popular value-added services. It has tied up with Universal Music Group so as to offer music streaming and is promoting its new App Store on Reliance 3G that enables you to get directions while on the road, tips on cooking and yoga, and so on.
Lessons from PSUs
There are some lessons to be learned from BSNL/MTNL in terms of 3G strategies that did not work well. Users found their 2G to 3G SIM card exchange system complicated since one was required to send an SMS as “M3G120” to 53733 and confirm the SMS you get back as “M3G120 Y” to 53733. BSNL’s strategy of offering 3G services at the same price as 2G perhaps weaned subscribers from competition. However, this did not lead to higher data average revenue per user (ARPU) vis-à-vis the 2G network. (In Japan, innovative data plans and highlighting the relevance of 3G services have enabled high penetration and data ARPU.) Moreover, MTNL and BSNL were not able to provide enough marketing thrust to 3G services, thus leading to a lack of awareness of their 3G services. It must not be forgotten that the target customers for a service like 3G prefer young and energetic brands like Airtel and Vodafone.
To provide critical insights in order to close in on a strategy for the deployment of 3G services, the eTech Group@IMRB, active in the area of telecom-related market research for several years now, recently carried out a Syndicated Study on 3G Mobile Services in India christened “The World Of 3nity”. The first round of the study has been conducted amongst as many as 10,000 mobile subscribers and 1,520 establishments across top cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The study also covers views of several industry experts on the India 3G market. Mobile operators seem to be on the right track since as many as 72 per cent of mobile users assume understanding usage of 3G services would be complicated and someone would need to demonstrate it to them first.
The study reveals that only 9 per cent own a 3G-enabled handset, but 82 per cent are willing to switch to a new (3G-enabled) handset to avail 3G services, provided it lies in the Rs 4,200- 6,400 price band. This is in line with the fact that Indian handset manufacturers have already started offering 3G-enabled handsets at ‘middle class affordable’ prices. With a plethora of handsets in the market, the bigger issue is the pricing of the 3G services. As we know, India is a price-sensitive market and for 3G to percolate to the masses the price would need to be quite low and attractive — to start with. However, that is unlikely to happen given the huge cost of spectrum which itself is scarce and the fact that some of the winners are operating in the low-ARPU voice market.
The consumer segment study was carried out using random sampling with a minimum quota for some aspects such as SEC A, B, C & D and subscribers of the 3G spectrum winners while. The fieldwork was completed in December 2010.
As per the IMRB study, 32 per cent are aware of 3G mobile services. Amongst those who are aware, as many as 93 per cent associate video calling with 3G. Here is what an industry expert says about other 3G services: “Purely utilitarian stuff like traffic signal, map, directions, facilities, restaurants and purely entertainment stuff like gaming, infotainment will be very big. Casual gaming will dominate.”
Video versus voice
The report also reveals even more interesting information — that while video calling may be the most awaited 3G application, the main reason people would consider subscribing to 3G services is that 73 per cent of mobile subscribers believe it will mean better voice quality. Experts believe that in the first instance, 3G will be used by many operators to improve their overall network quality and retain voice customers.
Video calling could well emerge as the next big mobile application. Even the unlettered can use it to communicate. However, there are certain constraints — both sides need a double camera phone. It is ironical that rural citizens who require high-speed applications (telemedicine, e-education) the most can afford them the least. In Korea, the government accelerated the adoption of 3G with subsidies for operators as well as mobile phone manufacturers. In India too, the government and industry would need to work together to take 3G to the villages.
The business segment study was done purposely amongst those involved with mobile/telecom decision-making. In case of SMEs, mobile usage is restricted to voice. Besides, messaging is also used especially by small enterprises. However, awareness of specialised enterprise applications such as ERP and CRM on mobile was found to be abysmal. In order to increase penetration of 3G amongst enterprises, it is important to create higher awareness about how they can utilise 3G for business purposes.
We have seen in global markets that it takes time for 3G to transcend from a technology to becoming a household need. The recent rollout of 3G in China has seen only 4 per cent adoption after two years of aggressive marketing by the players and evident government backing. Since none of the operators have a national footprint we are likely to see partnerships being forged amongst operators to weave together a national offering. And with consolidation in the telecom industry on the cards in the next few years, only time will tell who religiously followed Tao Te Ching’s wisdom.

The author is Group Business Director, IMRB

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An Insight Into OnMobile's Birth... A True Story

In 2002, Arvind Rao and Mouli Raman came close to shutting OnMobile, the company they had founded two years prior to that. They had nearly exhausted their $15 million of venture capital money , partly because of extensive travels around the world in search of the first customer.

Telecom operators were large, and none wanted to be a guinea pig for OnMobile's untested mobile products such as ringtones, alerts and voice-based searches. Rao remembers sitting in his California office wondering how to lay off his 30-40 people.

"The VC was acting tough. We wondered whether we should shut shop, and just tell the VC we gave it our best shot."
But somewhere deep within, they believed in their idea. "That's what I feel strongly about in entrepreneurship. You have to have conviction that the product will work. We had that conviction. So we decided to stick through the bad phase."

It's not official, but it's possible that OnMobile is today the world's biggest company providing mobile value-added services (VAS) other than voice-calls and SMSes. They have been told by one of the world's largest mobile operators that they account for 30% of the operator's global contentbased VAS revenues. The remaining 70% is fragmented. Large telecom operators in India have said that OnMobile accounts for 2-4 % of their overall revenues. "Worldwide, we have 90 million paying users every month," says Rao.

The story of OnMobile actually begins in Infosys Technologies. Mouli Raman, who grew up in a small town in Tamil Nadu and who had joined Infosys in 1988 after an engineering course in REC Allahabad, was servicing startups in California in the late 1990s. Raman felt it was possible to do in India what these tech startups were doing. It was the peak of the internet boom and he and a group in Infosys thought of developing internet products, and started with one that sent alerts to websites. Infosys encouraged the effort.

"But when the product's first version was ready, we realized we would have to spin it out from Infosys. The people, the risk mindset required for this venture were very different from that of a services company," says Mouli. That's when Rao entered. Rao, who grew up in Mumbai and had left for the US in 1980 after an engineering degree from IIT-Bombay , was in the venture capital industry in New York. He was interested in starting an India technology fund.

"For that, I was one day meeting Nandan (Nilekani) and Phaneesh Murthy in New York. It were the rah-rah days of the internet, and Phaneesh envied the lives of VCs (the superstars of those days). He wanted to get involved in the buzz. Nandan had been funding this Infy (Mouli) group, and he was keen to get it off his back."

Thus was born OnMobile. Rao found Mouli and team to be very good. "But I felt they missed the business model and the target . I was coming to it from the target of mobile and VAS; I felt the internet had a difficult-to-prove business model."

So the website alert product was turned into a mobile alert one. They introduced other applications, including one that allowed users to call up to get cricket scores and cricket biographies.

The first customer break came with Orange (later Hutch) in Mumbai. Asim Ghosh and Sandeep Das, who headed that operation, liked OnMobile's work. "Das was a big cricket fan. He liked our cricket app, but said he cannot pay us anything. So we agreed on a revenue share model," Rao says. This was also around the time that OnMobile went through its crisis , with cash nearly depleted.

The Orange service slowly gained acceptance , and it later took it all-India . "That's when others saw it; Airtel called us, Idea called us. After that we never looked back."

OnMobile's strength was its risk sharing and joint work with operators to make the products a success, instead of simply licensing its technology. It made gaining operator acceptance easy; it also brought them so close to customers that they innovated fast. "We evolved the ringback tone product so well, that though we were not the first with it in the world, ours became a blockbuster success ," says Mouli.

In 2008, they signed two agreements, with Vodafone and Telefonica of Spain, which expanded their global presence phenomenally. Vodafone wanted them to replicate their India success around the world. Telefonica wanted them to launch in 13 countries in Latin America. Mouli says they frequently receive requests from developed market operators to teach them the things being done in Asia. "They are hit by Google and Apple (app stores), and they believe we can help them counter this." source

“News near you” on Google News for mobile

Google News for mobile devices has added a “news near you” section that displays headlines related your device’s current location.
Its ease of use is impressive — just grant the site access to your device’s current location and it pulls up local headlines. While it goes further than any other mobile news aggregation site, it has flaws that leave room for another company or news organization to do better.

The “News near you” section on Google News for mobile.

More on that later, but first the key context on this feature and what Google is up to.
Google executive Eric Schmidt declared at the start of this year that the search giant would be all about preparing for the “mobile revolution.” All of its 2011 strategic initiatives focus on mobile, he said. “Between the geolocation capability of the phone and the power of the phone’s browser platform, it is possible to deliver personalized information about where you are, what you could do there right now, and so forth — and to deliver such a service at scale,” Schmidt wrote in the Harvard Business Review. Google is making mobile its first focus on all products.
Google News has had a local section on its website since 2008, but this new addition to the mobile version has precise location targeting. The desktop site places me in the Washington metro area, and shows me headlines from all over D.C., Maryland and Virginia. The mobile site detects my location specifically (and correctly) in Arlington, Va., and serves only very local news and features.
Now for the flaws, which leave room for a competitor to elbow into this mobile/local aggregation market.
First, the sources I see in my local feed from Google are not so diverse. Most of my headlines are from The Washington Post; a couple come from the Arlington Sun Gazette community newspaper. Google does, however, show me a couple posts from an active local news blog, ARLnow.com. There is room for either Google or a competitor to make a more comprehensive product.
The bigger problem for Google is that location is only one piece of the quest for the holy grail of online news: relevancy. So far, Google News is doing a good job of determining my location and aggregating stories that mention that location. But that’s where it ends, and that’s not good enough. What’s missing is the curation after the aggregation.

Two of the top five “local” stories Google News served me were either not really local or not really a story.

For example, the third story Google News showed me this morning was about the Armed Forces Network receiving broadcast journalism awards. A few of the award winners are here in Arlington, so it is a legitimately local story, but it’s not very relevant to me and certainly not among the top three things I want to read about my community today. The fifth headline in my Google News feed was a job listing for Lockheed Martin (based in Arlington, yes, but not news).
To create a market-dominating filter of local news, someone will need to curate the pool of aggregated news to match each reader’s interests, browsing history and social network activity, in addition to his or her location.
The killer app would be one that filters a breadth of local aggregation like Outside.in through a hyperpersonalized social filter sought by mobile services such as News.me and Trove combined with the personal browsing and search history of Google.
And even with all that, it remains to be seen whether automated filtering can entirely replace the role of a human editor in subjective news judgment. A human news editor would know a job posting is not a local news story no matter how many times it mentions your city’s name.
There remains an opportunity for media companies to be the dominant source of news aggregation and curation in their local markets, if they leverage their human touch and institutional knowledge as an advantage over Google and catch up on some of the technological systems. But many news organizations will first have to conquer reflexive fears about linking out and sending readers to other sites.
Your opinions are welcome here. Can a news organization curate better than Google’s engineering-based system? Will Google’s algorithms eventually be better than a human editor? Or will both approaches co-exist?   source

3G Hiccups

Walk into any mobile service provider's showroom and what you will see are the letters 3G everywhere. You will also be invited to see demos of ‘blazing' speeds. It is only when you go for a 3G connection that you start wondering whether you are just a guinea pig for the service provider.

Many of those who went for 3G services during the demo period got the advertised speeds. Only when the services went paid did the problems start.

One customer who suddenly found the speed drop to 30 kbps from over 3 Mbps was told to ‘enable 3G' again by sending an SMS ‘3G'. When he sent the SMS, he got the reply ‘3G services already enabled'. When he tried to recharge his account with a 3G pack, he was informed that the 2G Internet services were already on, and that he would have to disable it. He was told to send a ‘stop' request, which he promptly did and got a reply that the Internet services had been stopped. When he tried to recharge again, he got the message that the 3G pack could not be activated as he had over 2000 MB of data left in his account. To get the 3G services, he had to bring the unused data to below 50 MB. The ‘helpful' customer care lady asked him to keep downloading continuously so that the data came down below 50 MB. It would take weeks, the customer pleaded. There is no other alternative, was the reply from the customer care. The customer got fed up, threw away his card and got a new 3G enabled connection.

Another customer (with another operator) who got only 2G speeds was billed for 3G services. The 3G connectivity was also scrappy. The call centre was clueless about what she was being billed — for 3G or 2G. She got fed up and went back to 2G; at least the speed was consistent. When she tried to deactivate 3G, she got a message that 3G services were not active in her number. A call to the customer service department confirmed that 3G services were in fact, active.

Another operator attracts customers by advertising speeds of 7.2 MBPS. When a potential customer wanted to test the speed at the operator's demo zone, he was informed that the services were still not ‘stable' and that he would get speeds of only around 3 MBPS. The speed test revealed the real speed — it never crossed 2.2 MBPS!

This is the case with CDMA operators too. One operator who advertises 3G speeds in its USB modem had this excuse when the customer complained he was getting only around 1 MBPS against the advertised 3.1 MBPS. The customer service was surprised. “What? You get 1 MBPS? If you get speeds above 500 kbps, according to us, you are getting above average speeds.”

So, if you are ‘excited' about 3G, it's better to wait till the operators get a hang of their services! source

InMobi’s new mobile payments service to reach three billion users

By James Ratemo

InMobi, the world's largest independent mobile ad network, announced the launch of InMobi SmartPay™, a performance based global mobile payments solution.

InMobi SmartPay™ will enable app developers, game companies, and content providers in the US $200bn mobile content and virtual goods space to expand their business and monetize their users quickly and easily into new markets by providing a one-time, no-cost, single point of integration across multiple countries.

The solution offers consumers a seamless, pure mobile checkout experience using secure, direct to carrier billing to start, but expanding to all forms of mobile payment methods including credit cards, PayPal, and local mobile wallets by the end of 2011.

†The new solution already offers reach to over one billion consumers in seven countries, including the US, UK, Germany, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Malaysia, with huge growth plans to expand to over three billion consumers in 30 countries by the end of the year.

"Our mission is to connect businesses and developers to consumers around the world with innovative, best of breed mobile technology and services. InMobi SmartPay™ will help us with that journey and our evolution as a company to be a key technology enabler within the global mobile ecosystem, especially for the developer community," said Naveen Tewari, CEO of InMobi,

"Expanding to new markets is an extremely complex process today, especially for small developer teams sitting in a single geography. InMobi SmartPay™ exists to simplify the process through a single point of integration and management of all tax, legal, and customer support issues leveraging our in-market expertise. Even more importantly, we are an intelligent solution providing consumers with a low friction, secure purchase flow, and data-driven insights to help maximize conversion," said Piyush Shah, Vice President of InMobi SmartPay,

InMobi SmartPay™ is already active with numerous clients globally and is moving into private beta over the next 60 to 90 days before opening up the service to the entire market in Q3, 2011.

The launch of InMobi SmartPay™ is the first global offering of its kind in the mobile advertising market. It combines InMobi’s massive global ad network of nearly 32 billion ads monthly in 200 countries with a mobile payments solution, enhancing its core competitive advantage for clients by integrating actual purchasing behavior into its real-time ad-serving feedback loop. Tracking from ad to conversion is a major leap forward for developers and digital goods providers globally.

Major competitive advantages of the service include its ability to monetize three billion mobile consumers in 30 countries easily through mobile web and Android in-app billing by the end of 2011.

With the service also comes analytics tools that offer transaction performance insights that help clients maximize conversion in every country.

Apart from integration with the InMobi ad network providing post click performance optimization from ad impression to purchase. It also comes with secure and efficient technology that handles regulatory fraud, tax, currency, and settlements across all countries. source

Tablets in DEMAND

Last year, when Dow Jones tied up with Bharti Airtel to feature financial and business news from Wall Street Journal and its own wire services on mobile devices in India, the MD of Dow Jones India, Mitya New, showcased the content on the Apple iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab. This was surely indicative of things to come.The tablet PC is emerging as a must-have among the tech-savvy in India. However, tablet users in India till very recently had very little choice - they could either buy an Apple iPad or the Android-driven Samsung Galaxy Tab. There is the Olive tablet too since October last year, but apart from its pricing, it has failed to create an impact.
Last week, the tablet options doubled with the launch of Acer India's Iconia Tab A500, an Andriod-based 10.1-inch gadget, and the Windows 7-based Iconic Tab W500 in the same size. The A500 works on Google's Android Honeycomb 3.0 platform, the first tablet with Honeycomb 3.0 in India.

Several players are just waiting in the wings to launch their own tablets. "We can expect multiple launches in July-August so that the tablets are on the shelves by September. Lenovo's LePad, BlackBerry's Playbook, HP's Palm tablet and Cisco CIUS are expected to hit India in the coming months," said Sumanta Mukherjee, lead analyst for PC products, Cybermedia Research.
Samsung has announced two more tablets and Acer has lined up a dual touchscreen notebook for later this year.
There are no official figures for the number of tablet users in India as it is a very nascent market. However, the current market leader is the iPad, according to market watchers, despite its late official launch in India in March 2010. According to sources, iPad2 shipped 20,000 pieces for its India launch on April 29, which sold out within 72 hours. The current waiting period for an iPad2 is about 21 days.
There is the likelihood of local Indian mobile phone makers such as Micromax coming out with their own tablet soon. Also, there is talk of Reliance Infotel, which has bagged a 3G licence, coming up with its own branded tablet, Mukherjee added.
The market is niche and only a small percentage of Indians are likely to buy a tablet if they already have a mobile phone and a laptop or PC, said Rajiv Makhni, managing editor (technology), NDTV. "The tablet market will get very interesting the minute a company has the foresight to launch a tablet priced under Rs 15,000. If that happens, it will penetrate the masses and the tablet will become the new all-in-one entertainment and communication station."
Sandip Biswas, director, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, said, "We should not be surprised if, in two years' time, Android-based tablets priced below Rs 10,000 emerge. Anyway, the tablets will need to come below Rs 20,000 in order to address larger consumer numbers. People are already working on that in the Far East and Asian markets."
Tablet-makers are optimistic. "Across India, the response for the Tab has been huge and Samsung is already targeting a 50% share of the Indian tablet market this year," said Ranjit Yadav, Samsung's country head for mobile and IT.
"With consumers getting more technologically aware and willing to experiment with new gadgets, we are confident that tablet PCs will capture a significant share in the market, which will focus on early adopters and tech-savvy users who want to experience more content on the move," said S. Rajendran, chief marketing office, Acer India.
"Tablets are aimed at a new and emerging consumer demand that is poised to grow phenomenally. Consumers have already started to explore the tablet's limitless potential," said Vishal Dhupar, MD, Asia South, NVIDIA, a computing technologies firm that has partnered with Motorola, Samsung, Acer, LG and Asus for their tablets.
"As our professional and personal lives get more intertwined, consumers will increasingly look for a device that can cater to both professional and leisure needs. With the growing availability of high-speed mobile and wi-fi networks, mobile devices will also be used for performance-intensive tasks handled so far by traditional PCs."

"We believe that tablets will end up being an awesome content consumption device as people have mobile lives and expect to see and share content in real time. An improving global economic situation is likely t find customer spends increasing on aspirational products. With more useful and interactive content, the demand for handheld devices has already started to pick up. Tablets have started to find usages inside corporates, hotels, education and healthcare. This will further consolidate the tablet's position as a specific category and not as a replacement to netbook or a notebook," said Jagdeep Kochar, VP & business head, EBS Worldwide.
Deloitte's Biswas said, "Enterprise usage - medical representatives, sales and retail service personnel are all potential users of tablets. Even payments on delivery can be effected on tablets."
In terms of relative usage, Biswas said, "People will continue to use mobile phones for its primary voice utility; the tablet will become the mobile PC device and laptops/notebooks will sit on table tops in offices or homes. The desktop PC's days are over."
By March 2013, Deloitte expects that worldwide, 35% of the overall tablet PC base of around 100 million units will be delivered by iPhones, 40% by Android-based tablets, 15% by Windows-based tablets and the remaining by other technologie. source

VRock Gets Interim Order Against RCOM For IPL4 VAS

Hot News is hot again: VRock mobile has obtained an interim order from the Delhi High Court, which restricts the provisioning of SMS and Interactive Voice Response (IVR; voice portal) services being provided by Reliance Communications to customers, for the Indian Premier League (IPL). The order was obtained ex-parte; Justice V. K. Jain, upon hearing arguments from the plaintiff (vRock) said that an interim permission will be granted to Reliance Communications, subject to making a provisional payment of 25% of revenue earned so far by providing value added services related to IPL 4, and continuing to pay 25% of revenue earned, and subject to the same terms and conditions since vRock has agreed upon with Tata Indicom. If Reliance Communications doesn’t approach vRock for this deal, then there is an injunction preventing it from providing SMS and IVR services. Season four of the IPL is expected to end by May 28th, and the court took into account that the matter needs to be heard at the earliest. MediaNama was present at the hearing.
Explaining the concept of Hot News, Pravin Anand, representing vRock Mobile, pointed out that news such as Cricket scores is time sensitive, and while it is in outside the realm of copyright, it is a case of quasi-property; IPL has a limited timeframe. Additionally, he said that Reliance Communications (RCOM) cannot deny that the rights to Cricket scores via SMS and IVR exist, since it had itself entered into commercial negotiations with vRock for the very same rights for the ICC Cricket World Cup; talks had ended when an agreement over the amount to be paid to RCOM for the rights could not be reached. RCOM, as we had reported earlier, had acquired all mobile rights for the ICC Cricket World Cup. vRock also disclosed that it has paid Rs. 65 crore ($14.5 million) for a period of 5 years for the rights.
Please note that this is an interim order, issued ex-parte, which means that Reliance Communications was not represented.
Implications
One immediate implication of this is that RCOM will have to disclose revenue earned from providing these services to the court, if it does tie up vRock, else it will have to stop its SMS and IVR services. Secondly, the question of who owns the right to provide Cricket scores, even if for commercial purposes, lends itself to a larger debate of whether information of a public event is a case of quasi-property, and the organizer has ownership of this information. Remember that the owner of the event controls access to it. source

Apalya wins Global Mobile TV Rights for IPL 2011 and 2012

So it’s confirmed, albeit rather late, and almost a full month after we had reported it: Apalya, the mobile and broadband video streaming platform, which has the widest distribution with telecom operators in the country, has announced the acquisition of exclusive mobile and video streaming rights for all matches from the Indian Premier League, for two years including the current 2011 season. Apalya was also the Mobile TV partner for IPL’s 2009 & 10 season. Meanwhile, vRock Mobile was in court yesterday, trying to protect its IPL4 SMS and IVR rights.

Other companies delivering TV content over mobile include Percept Knorigin with BSNL, and Geodesic’s joint venture with the Zee group for Mundu TV. Also note that ZengaTV, which had acquired live streaming rights for the first season of the Indian Premier League, recently inked a mobile streaming partnership with (still) UTV owned Indiagames.

Apalya also recently tied up with Bharti Airtel for broadband services, delivering TV and video on demand content over wireline broadband at Rs 99 per month; not a net-neutral service. The company also had partnerships with Vodafone for the mobile broadcast of Cricket World Cup 2011, claims to have partnerships with more than 150 televison channels in India. source