Netizens turn to phones for chat succour

REMEMBER the time when the word ‘SMS’ made you sit up and say, ‘Pardon me?’? That wasn’t too long ago.
Today, SMS is old wine, although you keep getting it in new bottles, much of it thanks to the increasing convergence of television with telecommunications. With so many things happening so fast, you often end up re-discovering the supposedly obsolete — phone chatting for instance.
It’s a service introduced over a year ago by most cellphone operators, considered passé.Until now.
With MSN closing down its chat-rooms on the internet on October 14 this year, cellphone operators started cashing in on the need for people to chat.
It therefore becomes rather interesting to look at the anonymous phone chat which gives you all the privacy you need, though at a price. While you pay at least Re 1 for a simple SMS, a chat message costs between Rs 1.50 to Rs 3 depending upon the service provider.
Idea Cellular claims that 15 per cent of their daily total SMS hits are phone chat messages. Rahul Pandey, senior marketing manager, Maharashtra, Idea, says, “We have chat facilities for our post and pre-paid customers. It is just like the internet and you don’t know who you are talking to. There are various groups and you can choose which group you want to be a part of. This facility is very popular among youngsters and is definitely quite cheap -Re 1 per message.�
The infrastructure cost required to support chatting through the mobile is far higher than the cost of providing internet chatting, which makes it difficult to reduce this cost further.
Interestingly, the revenue generated by phone chat is almost negligible. “It comprises one per cent of the total SMSs generated,� says Sanjoy Mukerji, COO, Hutch, who are rumoured to be making an entry into Pune soon.
While Airtel has no phone chatting facilities yet, they are increasing mobile activity by providing a dating game specifically designed for SMS mobile phone messages. The game is very much like what you would find on the internet. In each game, a group of males compete for the attention of a female player, or alternatively, a group of female players will compete for the attention of male player. Identity of people in this case is not known either.
Reliance Web world has similar facilities where the user can access email, as well as chat with people.
anuradha.kher@timesgroup.com