OnMobile, Orange to offer World Cup live

BANGALORE: Infosys Technologies-promoted OnMobile Systems, a multi-modal wireless services firm, in association with Hutchison Max Telecom will launch a multi-modal World Cup Football application, on Monday to deliver audio action replays of live matches to Orange subscribers in Mumbai.
With this, Orange subscribers will have ``close to live'''' access to audio World Cup Football coverage via voice, SMS and Web interfaces.
OnMobile head (marketing) Amit Dey said that Orange subscribers can chose their favorite World Cup teams and matches and can access the match update via voice, SMS or Web interactive.
``Orange subscribers can call (the number to be dialed is 12333) directly into the system and listen to audio action replays of live events, as well as navigate through earlier action highlights or commentary from other matches. The Orange subscribers can choose to receive SMS alerts for score and goal updates, red cards, injuries and penalty shoot-outs. Other features on offer include start and end of matches and their first and second halves and colour of the jersey.'''' The company has done a research and found that the above features are of interest among football fans.
Accoring to OnMobile CEO Arvind Rao said, "This World Cup application demonstrates the unique capabilities of multi-modal technology that telecom operators can deploy to deliver fast payback and high ROI-enhanced services. We plan to roll out several new multimodal services over the next few months, including those that incorporate the capabilities of MMS and 2.5 and 3G networks.''''
Dey said in addition to football, in the pipeline are music concerts and cricket matches.
As the application is part of Orange''s VOX* services, users can transit onto other OnMobile-developed applications such as cricket, stocks, news and horoscopes after listening to World Cup coverage. The application runs on OnMobile''s multimodal platform, MMP2500, available in Orange''s GSM network. Hutchison Max Telecom head (value added services) Balu Nayar said the application would enhance the usage levels. The application is scheduled to be launched in Mumbai on June 10.
OnMobile has entered into partnerships with Nuance Communications, a speech recognition technology firm, TEAMtalk, a UK-based provider of original sports content and its parent.