It's All About Updates

Aircel group, A joint venture between Maxis Communications Berhad of Malaysia and Sindya Securities & Investments Private Limited today introduced Facebook updates on SMS service to its prepaid and postpaid subscribers. Now user can see and post status updates, comment, like, poke and more from their mobile phones as SMS without any need of GPRS or internet.
To enable this service, simply go to Facebook and log in to you account, go to Account Settings tab, under the ‘Mobile’ tab, select ‘Register for Facebook Text Messages. Now select ‘Aircel India’ as your mobile provider from drop down menu and select India as a country and Aircel India as you carrier and press next. Now using your mobile phone, send a text message containing only the letter F to 51555 (SMS charges at 50 paisa) and wait for a message, after receiving the SMS from 51555, simply enter activation/confirmation code mentioned in the SMS to enable this service. Now user can post status updates, comment, like, poke and more. To post status updates on Facebook profile, just write SMS and send it to 51555.

“Vodafone Qatar” – A joint venture between Vodafone and the Qatar Foundation – has reported a net loss of 673.4 million riyals ($185.1 million) in its 2009-10 fiscal year whereas generated the Revenue of QAR 361.5 million (US$99.2 million) for the full year to 31 March, which is 26% ahead of its plan when the company launched its network last year.

The Company’s customer base continues to grow; on 9 May Vodafone Qatar announced that they had reached 500,000 customers. In the last quarter of the financial year, Vodafone Qatar’s customer base grew 32% as a result of continued international calling promotions and the 2010 domestic calling campaign.

On the announcement of Vodafone Qatar’s full year results, Chief Financial Officer John Tombleson commented, “We now have a substantial customer base that will help drive future performance and forms a solid basis for generating future revenue growth. We expect to build upon our achievements in the next financial year.”

Vodafone qatar is Qatar’s second biggest mobile operator, It won the license in 2007 for $2.12 billion and broked monopoly of “Qatar Telecom” in the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporter.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is selling like hot cakes in Japan. NTT DoCoMo sold around 120,000 Xperia X10 in just 20 days. Earlier NTT DoCoMo managed to sell 80,000 HTC Android in 10 months, 60,000 BlackBerry Bold in 14 months and 60,000 Toshiba Windows Mobile in 10 months. The phone is the best selling on the network for April, even outselling rivals such as the iPhone 32GB.

 Vodafone Essar today launched two new ISD Bonus Cards for its prepaid customers in Kolkata. These Bonus cards offer customers reduced tariff options to make outgoing calls to Bangladesh.

-> Aircel has partnered with ibibo.com to introduce Social Gaming to Aircel subscribers. Aircel subscribers can play "Great Indian Parking Wars" on the Aircel Pocket Internet. Aircel and ibibo.com will soon increase the number of games users can play. Users can log on to these games using their Facebook ID or ibibo.com ID.

In Great Indian Parking Wars, users role play as owners of a street and they are encouraged to role play and do tasks along with their friends. Tasks further drive points for the users and hence a leader board that drives competition amongst friends. The key aspect here is that the social application acts as a catalyst for users to come back and pull friends to the social network every day. These games act as conversation starters and makes relationships in the social context more valuable.

-> TATA DOCOMO has introduced Pay-Per-Second & Pay-Per-Minute Combo Plan in Kolkata and West Bengal. It offers both Pay-Per-Minute and Pay-Per-Second tariff options with a single recharge. To avail of this exciting new offer, new subscribers will have to recharge with a Recharge Voucher of Rs 24, which will entitle them to a talktime of Rs 10, while existing TATA DOCOMO subscribers will simply have to recharge with a voucher of Rs 21, which will also entitle them to a talktime of Rs.10 to avail of the new Pay Per Second and Pay Per Minute tariffs.

Within a few weeks of debuting the new concept of ‘dynamic pricing’ in the three telecom circles of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Uninor has now launched the ‘24X7 Badalta Discount Plan (DP)’ in the states of Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand .

The plan will offer customers changing discounts on their calls based on traffic on the network. The discounts will change with location and with time, with each cellphone tower broadcasting a different discount. At the same location, the discount will change on an hourly basis. By putting customers in control of costs, with 24X7 changing discount rates.