By Jayakishore Bayadi

Bangalore: Kiran Anandam Pillai, Head-Consumer Products, OnMobile delivered second keynote of the day. He said that whether it is a landline or mobile, VAS, which includes a bundle of non-voice based data services, act as enablers that boost the plummeting Average Revenue per User (ARPU) of operators. Plus, today operators promote 95 percent of the VAS services.

Further, he said that the advent of new networks, high bandwidth availability, transition from circuit-switched to packet networks, and upgrades in handset standards and technologies that support new formats (3G, SIP) that are happening on a global scale are increasingly creating more space to exploit VAS as an important commercial opportunity. People now widely use their handsets to play games, download ring tones, read news alerts, access the Internet, listen to music, access information from banks, check exam results, book tickets for movies, trains, and flights, participate in contests, and view one touch ads, amongst others.

Anandampillai said that simplified content discovery methods are creating opportunities to increase the VAS revenue. Now, one touch RBT (ring back tone) has become the quickest way to get one’s preferred content. For instance, after this technology was introduced, OnMobile registered an increase of 47 percent in song selection per month. RBT net additions per month grew from 9.6 percent to 26.7 percent.

However local language content is hot prospect for VAS. Onmobile got an overwhelming response to its vernacular WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and registered an average of two downloads per minute, he said.

Nowadays a mobile can be your CD, TV, newspaper, watch, camera, and gaming device, all rolled into one. It is expected that every fourth subscriber will have email facility in his mobile by 2009. Mobile game is another segment in the Indian VAS market whose growth defies imagination.

In rural areas local content on VAS would be key to growth, he said. For example, a farmer would be interested to know the mandi price in his area, rather than quotes from remote cities. Also, he can get answers for his farm related queries via SMS from experts from an institute, which provides such services. Plus, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) will also see large-scale adoption in this area. The challenge for an operator is to aggregate content that is as locally relevant as possible. Yet, rural VAS is not only just about commodity prices. Interactive media programs receive excellent responses from non-urban locations, said Anandampillai.

SMS interactivity is now becoming an integral part of most of the TV shows in India. Leading broadcasters of the country such as STAR, Sony, and others have formed separate divisions to exploit the Mobile-media convergence. Newspapers and TV news shows are already leveraging this through their opinion polls. It’s also grown into a significant source of revenue for TV channels, said Anandampillai.

Apparently, there is a huge scope for innovation in VAS. Location based services, car pooling, GPS, TV serial updates, SMS for public services, mobile dating, remotely controlled applications, voice morphing services targeting children, and mobile-search are really some of the hot prospects under VAS, he iterated.

Interesting trend we are seeing today is that significant revenue shifting towards Subscriptions from pay-per-use system. Sachet pricing model is becoming popular, he concluded.