mobileVAS

For how many years, have you been using a mobile phone? I have been using for quite sometime. I remember that a decade ago, I had no idea about SMS or MMS. I was thinking of the mobile phone sector of Pakistan today.

Indian citizens applying for passport can henceforth receive the status of their application on mobiles by sending an SMS to 57272 and typing “Ppt”.

The service is available since February 9.

Vodafone followed its GSM counterpart, Airtel in blocking the services of VAS provider, Netcore Solutions citing that the services do not conform to the regulations as laid down by the Trai.

Netcore maintains that its services are purely opt-in services and are in no way unsolicited services. It claims to have 3.8 million subscribers for its services., ‘MyToday’.

Vodafone though has blocked access to Netcore’s short code 575758.

Earlier in November 2008, Bharti Airtel had also blocked the services citing the same reason.

Leading VAS player, Bharti Teleosft and Telecom Italia Sparkle announced the service description and pending launch of the borderless recharge HUB stating that launch of the service is now scheduled for Q2 2009.

The tie-up aims to address the need of prepaid mobile subscribers to recharge their accounts while being out of the home network.

Arturo Danesi, Sr. VP Marketing at Telecom Italia Sparkle, said: “We are moving ahead rapidly to launch Borderless Recharge Hub. We see major potential for the roaming recharge and airtime transfer services to significantly enhance the satisfaction levels of prepaid roaming subscribers whilst at the same time helping our operator customers extend their service capabilities cost-effectively. This has been reinforced by our discussions with many leading operators in major markets globally, who are keen to launch services for the prepaid roaming community.”

Ossian Agro developed Nano Ganesh application has been feted by Nokia, in the Emerging Markets category of Nokia Calling All Innovators competition from over 1,000 developers who have used mobile applications and services to better the world.

The application, created by Santosh Ostwal for his firm Ossian Agro stands amongst the ten other developers who were bestowed with the recognition at Barcelona in the week’s GSMA Mobile World Congress.

Nokia has awarded a cash prize of $ 25,000 and a promise of further help in distributing mobile applications to global consumers to Ossian Agro Automation.

While announcing the award, Rob Taylor, Director of Forum Nokia, said, “Nokia is pleased to recognize Ossian Agro’s Santosh Ostwal as a real innovator in mobile development, having answered our global challenge for truly outstanding applications designed to help make the world a better place to live. We’re excited to be able to help put these remarkable mobile applications and services in front of consumer and business users through our Calling All Innovators competition.”

Nano Ganesh is a modem that converts signals received on a mobile phone into commands for the switch of the pumpset to switch on or off, allows farmers to remotely access their irrigation pumps, helping them cut down on commuting.

Bharti Telesoft, the leading provider of integrated VAS solutions for mobile operators in emerging markets, today announced a partnership with Grand Technology, one of the leading telecom solution providers in Yemen and across the Middle … The company specializes in the field of Value Added Services, providing consultancy services and also operating as a content provider. Over the years Grand Technology has gained a prestigious position and a solid relationship with all …

French Telecommunication company Viaccess in collaboration with DVB-H service integrator RRD rolled out an end-to-end mobile TV security solution, devised on the OMA BCAST SmartCard Profile standard.

The solution is believed to provide a complete interoperability between the Viaccess purple-TV conditional access system and the RRD multi provider end to end architecture. And the OMA BCAST Smartcard profile will safeguard Mobile TV services through the use of a SIM card, says the tie-up.

“Our partnership with RRD demonstrates our full interoperability with the Broadcast mobile TV market. We believe the best value we can propose to our clients is turning the best in class products into immediately deployable solutions, and minimize integration costs. We are proud RRD joins our ecosystem of partners to ensure compatibility of our solutions with the complete chain of broadcast equipment and receivers,” said François Moreau de St Martin, Viaccess CEO on the partnership.

Upon a successful trial, all OMA BCAST compliant handsets will be able to access premium mobile television services.

Franco Ferri, General Manager for RRD, further commented, “We have been very pleased to work with Viaccess, a leader in the security solutions for broadcasting and now a forerunner in the mobility arena. They have proven to be interoperable with the open standards solution that we propos, and we believe that the inclusion of Viaccess in the range of technologies deployed by RRD will benefit the entire Mobile TV ecosystem.”

This solution can be applied to any handset compliant with OMA BCAST Smartcard Profile.

TRAI also said that mobile operators need to provide fair access to their telecom infrastructure to independent content providers and maintain transparency in their management information system relating to value-added services for …

The SDP platform, to be commercially launched during the first half of 2009, allows Telefonica to deliver value added services and eases the process of implementing new services such as universal email, mobile newspapers, 3G messaging …