VAS ASIA 2010, New Delhi

The prospect of Value Added Services becoming a huge industry with a turnover of Rs 100,000 crores annually by 2020 emerged at a VAS conference here today. According to OnMobile Chairman and CEO Mr. Arvind Rao VAS would be a “transformational force” and even by 2015 when its turnover would rise from Rs. 15,000 crores now to Rs 50,000 crores it would be a larger industry than advertising or media. Over 2.5 lakh villages would be connected to wireless broadband and 3G by 2012 enabling them to access the whole range of value added services, said Department of Telecom Secretary Sh. P. J. Thomas inaugurating the conference. The entire lot of panchayats would be connected through optical fibre and computers providing them broadand services, he revealed.
From ringback tone the next big money spinner for the telcos would be Mobile VAS, Mr. Rao said. Though VAS was providing only 10 per cent of the revenues for telcos, within this decade the situation would be reversed with value added services ringing 80 per cent of the revenues and voice revenue shrinking to 20 per cent. The trend abroad was for services like mobile music, moile video, mobile TV, smart phones, converged devices at home enabling users to switch between fixed and mobile phones, use of mobile for social networking and a host of other services on the mobile phone.
These and other projections of the vast range of innovations on mobile phones on the move were the subject of presentations by Aircel CMO Rahul Saigal and Idea Cellular Chief corporate affairs officer Rajat Mukarji. Public sector telco BSNL was even now providing 3G experience to its subscribers in 450 cities and towns, said R. K. Aggarwal, director of consumer mobility in the countrywide company. He also revealed that another 250 towns would get the benefit within the next five months.