Presenting this emerging future
scenario, telecom experts said at VAS Asia 2011 that mobile smart phone would
also become a platform for providing a level playing field for people from
different socio-economic communities. 

BSNL chairman and managing director
Rakesh K Upadhyay inaugurated the conference in Delhi on July 8.

It is a huge opportunity as the
market for value added services is set to expand beyond voice and phone, from
entertainment to utilities and services,” said Jason Stirling, senior
vice-president, Asia Pacific, Nuance Communications giving the key note
address.  This would bring scalaeable, cost effective secure ways to
deploy VAS to masses especially in rural areas to change their lives.” 

Voice biometrics on mobile would
enhance efficiency, security and customer experience. With voice biometrics
phone banking authentication, real time fraudsters detection and private
banking security among other benefits accrue. It could also help in government
and homeland security, and other secure access to many services.

Application developers need to work
across all sections of people’s lives bringing them entertainment, education,
healthcare, financial services among others.  VAS market in India was all
set to change radically as the reach of the mobile gets to people never exposed
to such technological yet simple access devices that cross all sorts of
traditional barriers, thereby improving access to information that gets more
sophisticated by the day.

Predicting smart phone penetration
to rise from 5.2 per cent of the mobile subscription base to 14 per cent by
2014, Sandip Biswas, director of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India said,
growth, listed M-Commerce, M-Law, M-Governance, M-agriculture and M-education
as the areas to develop in value added services on the mobile phone. 

There is a huge gap of understanding
between telecom service providers and VAS providers that could affect
growth.  For the full benefits of this transformation to be realized he
wanted policy framework that now was thin, initiative of much greater depth
from the private sector, among other requirements. 

How value added services on the
mobile phone would help push inclusion in the government services reach was evident
in the proposed cash subsidy disbursal to the target population using the
mobile phone. This was possible because of the wide reach of the mobile,
pointed out MTNL executive director A. K. Bhargava. The VAS innovators
should think beyond formulae as was being attempted by the Bollywood producers
now to come up with content that appealed to the youth.

How Nepal was planning the spread of
different value added services on its widening mobile subscriber base, was the
theme that Vishwa Nath Goel, managing director, Nepal Telecom presented
at the conference.  According to Goel, Nepal was rapidly moving to match
global level of services on the mobile phone to the people.

The service provider and public
interest in value added services on the mobile was so widespread that several
new and existing players are getting involved in differentiating their services
to gain market penetration.

Other lead players include Dialogic,
OnMobile, RadiSys, Motricity, Netxcell, Avaya, Donjin, MapmyIndia, Spice, Tieto
India, Wipro, One97 Communications, Buongiorno etc. are ensuring that the
Indian consumer of mobile telecom services would not be missing what the global
mobile users now enjoy.

For many millions in the country
dead time hangs heavily as they ride trains and buses. Mobile services on the
phone could help exploit these hours for education, health check, reaching out
to public offices, apart from entertainment.  In fact the android equipped
mobile handsets whose costs are continually falling making them affordable to a
whole range of people, were already awakening the mobile user to the huge
opportunity that is emerging, telecom experts explained at the conference.

By TelecomLead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com