How to handle 50 million phone messages

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As the fever rages, and TV becomes increasingly interactive with umpteen reality shows, channels have to manage thousands of phone calls and millions of SMSes that flow in.

But managing these millions of SMSes is a mammoth task. The toughest part of managing the SMSes ,note channel operators, comes at the last stage of voting or the finale of any show when the counting happens in real time, and the IT team has just about 10-15 minutes to analyse the data and declare the results.

To manage this huge inflow of phone calls and SMSes, most media houses have set up dedicated teams that handle all the interactivity. These teams take care of all the requirements like short code platform, hosting requirements, related hardware and software, connection with the network provider and other issues.

Zee Television, for instance, has a dedicated company called Corner Soft Entertainment that takes care of 10-50 million SMSes every month.

"We have a separate team as they understand this space very well. They are responsible for the convergence of all the different formats like SMS, tele-voting, and IVR voting," says Ishwar Jha, CEO, Digital Media Convergence Ltd, a subsidiary of Essel group.

The importance of the mobile business can be gauged by the amount of IT spent these companies have made.

"We have spent Rs 5-10 crore to set up the IT infrastructure to manage the SMSes. But mobile platforms are evolving so fast that we need to invest in them regularly. Annually the company spends in the range of Rs 3-4 crore," adds Jha.

Agrees Viren Popli, senior VP Star Mobile Enterprise: "IT investment in the mobile business has been growing substantially. It has been growing by 60-70 per cent year-on-year, reason being that the business of mobile platform is very different."

At Star TV, the mobile platform is a huge business opportunity. It recently launched a mobile portal. With close to 5-15 million SMSes every month the company believes that revenues from this segment will grow in the future.

However, contrary to popular understanding, operators do not manage these incoming votes. It is the channel operators who manage and collate the results of these SMSes. Yet, in terms of revenue sharing, close to 70 per cent of the share goes to the telecom provider while the channels get only 30 per cent.

Kaushal Modi, head licensing and telephony, Set India, feels that interactive services constitute a minuscule percentage of the overall revenue.

"However, what is key is that over a period of time, this contribution percentage has been increasing exponentially. In case of shows like Indian Idol etc. the interactive revenues do constitute a significant percentage of overall revenues," he adds.

Indian Idol season 3 on Sony TV received more than 100 million SMS votes. "The application service providers that we have and the various built-in capacities in the IT systems allow us to manage a few million responses per hour. Responses are collated across these multiple platforms and processed centrally," explains Modi.

The process does not stop here, for every SMS received, the channel also sends out a "Thank you" message.