South Asia represents some of the fastest growing wireless markets in the world. The key driver for this growth will come from India with subscriber numbers expected to reach 532.8 Million by 2010.
While a majority of the markets are still on 2.5G networks, countries such as Sri Lanka & the Maldives have already gone 3G. With 3G licenses being announced in India, the fastest growing market in South Asia & in fact the world, the requirement for sustainable, viable 3G services will increase with demand focusing on innovative solutions that can generate revenues from non-voice services & transform operators from network providers to service providers.
The Sri Lankan market has enjoyed robust growth through fiscal year 2007 with subscriber growth closing in on 48%. Significant investment in network expansion, new technology & value added services have all contributed to this growth. Sri Lanka is also an early adopter of new technology & boasts several firsts particularly in the region. We were the first country in South Asia to introduce GSM in 1995, GPRS in 2001 & 3G in 2006.
WaveNET has successfully developed & deployed several 3G based value added services & applications for both Dialog Telekom & Mobitel Lanka. These services take into account the individual market conditions in South Asia where a majority of the users are prepaid & have limited budgets & low cost handsets. There is also poor Internet penetration & multilingual populations where English is not prevalent.
3G represented a unique opportunity for us to innovate & address these market conditions to deliver a customer centric set of services that will drive 3G usage & increase revenue.
Building on the success & popularity of voiceSMS, Dialog Telekom together with WaveNET launched ‘Face 2 Face’ a video messaging service that enables users to record a video message of themselves & send that message to another user. |
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This service was built on top of our VSDP (video service delivery platform) which is a complete framework for the creation, running & managing of 3G services.
We also created a live video portal for Mobitel where live events not traditionally covered by TV can be broadcast live over mobile. Some of the events broadcast live over mobile have been a Ms. Sri Lanka fashion show, & University convocation among others.
Our live video portal also provides a visual interface to popular IVR services including horoscopes, lottery information & a host of other services. Built into the platform is a powerful UGC sharing application & a video blog site where users can record comments & keep a video diary. The power of these applications were demonstrated during the broadcast of the Fashion show as all the contestants created video profiles of themselves which in turn led to high traffic generator allowing them to leave comments/messages for the contestants.
Utilizing the VSDP platform, Mobitel was the first in the market to launch mobile advertising where PABC bank had their sponsorship message played before accessing the video service.
WaveNET’s VSDP platform along with our set of ready to use applications enable us to address the South Asian market needs. The VSDP services are circuit switched driven providing the users with a simple mechanism to access the services, dial a short code. It also does not require expensive or high-end handsets. Utilizing the inherent video calling infrastructure in the network, we have broken the language barrier & provided users with a powerful visual interface to everyday services including information services & productivity services such as MVB™ – mobile visual banking.
Sri Lanka being the first country to launch 3G had given us a unique ability to develop & take to market a set of applications & services that can make sense to the South Asian Consumer. We look forward to sharing our experiences. |
