BSNL to launch location based services by year-end

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Bhaskar Hazarika

NEW DELHI: State-Owned PSU, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) will be launching its Location Based Services (LBS) to its customers in two regions by the end of the year.

With the launch of the LBS, BSNL will be the first mobile operator to offer this service in the country. Currently, no mobile operator is offering this service in India. Telenity, a US based provider of next-generation services for communications networks has deployed the solution in 19 circles of BSNL across the country.

Vikram Manchanda, Sales Manager APAC, Telenity said that the deployment of the LBS application in the BSNL network is over. “We had an agreement with BSNL to provide Canvas Location Enabling Server in July 2006 and our work is over. It is now up to BSNL to launch it,” Manchanda said.

He said that the application is being customised according to the needs of the operators. He said that they can also customise the application on regional languages according to the preference of the operator.

The application can be rolled out once the maps of the cities are available. According to industry experts, there are maps available for 250 cities and BSNL could offer their LBS in those cities.

A.K. Sinha, Chairman and Managing Director, BSNL said that they are planning to launch the LBS soon in the major cities and towns. But he denied revealing the time frame when it would be rolled out.

“The entire system is ready for offering the services. We are planning to launch by the year-end. We are waiting for the right time to roll out this service,” BSNL official sources said.

Value Added Service (VAS) today becomes the major source of revenue for telecom companies. The global VAS market is currently around 2000 crore and is expected to grow to around 4000 crore this year. In 2005, APAC contributed 29 per cent share in the global VAS market. Mobile entertainment is set to become $5 billion business in India in the next 2 years.

With operators striving to offer variety of services to its customers, BSNL is not going to be a spectator here by offering only voice and SMS based communication to its subscribers. Sinha said that the telecom player is taking special initiatives to added more services to its bouquet. “We are considering triple play services for our subscribers and efforts are on to roll out new services soon. We are also looking at offering audio and video streaming which promises a huge market,” Sinha added.

Manchanda said that through the LBS a subscriber would be able to access the important locations on mobiles through SMS, MMS and GPRS. He said that this service would be as cheaper as SMS service.

Speaking about its market potentials, he said that LBS would prove to be one of the major revenue earning service for the operators in the couple of years. In the Asia-Pacific region only single operators in each Korea and Japan is offering this service.

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