Rich media content driven value added services

Going by the market demands and industry interests and needs, it can be easily said that in the coming times VAS and not voice will be the major catalyst or the key driver for the next generation growth of Indian telecom industry. The responsibility of realizing the full potential of VAS now lies on the telcos and government to give real value to their end customers and develop and deploy VAS applications that have a big local element attached to themselves.

VAS Drivers
The VAS segment is showing steady growth and still has tremendous potential. Backed by a growing consumer class and middle class, young population and increasing discretionary spending, today’s Indian customers constitute one of the biggest VAS markets in the world, making it the region of choice for global VAS vendors to launch innovative solutions through different platforms. Even for the telecom service providers or operators, the realization of full potential of VAS holds key towards the doors to success, margins and exponential growth. VAS growth has been further spurred by increased focus on this segment by operators, thanks to steadily declining voice ARPUs and cut-throat competition on the operator side. The imminent mobile number portability has also driven operators to offer unique and innovative value added services to differentiate themselves in the market.

Increasingly enough, rich media content driven value added services are seen ass a big differentiator in the eyes of end customers, who are always looking for the big unique selling proposition. Availability of rich content, access to which is simplified through solutions has also increased consumer awareness and uptake of VAS applications at the end customer level. Moving forward, operators should take VAS solutions to the unconnected upcountry locations of the nation and at the same time, increase their VAS bouquet of services by having unique applications like digitizing audio content, uploading content to operator's portals, to producing/generating mobile content, including voice based applications etc.

Source: IT VAR News