Instant messaging over PCs is a rage in India - mainly among the youth, facilitated over Yahoo, MSN and Google chat. However, this addiction is yet to spill over to cellphones.Instant Messaging (IM) "" a popular service on mobile phones across the world "" is yet to catch the fancy of telecom service providers in India. Despite being the third-largest telecom market in the world, with over 180 million mobile subscribers, there are only three operators "" Reliance Communications, Bharti Airtel and BPL Mobile "" providing these services in the country.Commonly known as chat, IM is a form of real-time communication mode sent over text. The text is conveyed via computers over the Internet, or over airwaves as in the case of mobile phones. Rahul Prabhakar, a consultant with Capgemini Consulting, says: "IM is one of the key applications that will help operators increase their data revenue. Its importance is next only to SMS."According to Prabhakar, the usage of IM on mobile phones is still at a nascent stage. "However, there are no figures available to substantiate this," he adds.Across the world, there were around 350 million IM users (including PC and mobile IMs) in 2005, a leap from the meagre 56 million subscribers recorded in 2001. This is a real indicator of the growth prospect of the service.But then why is it not catching up in the country? Prabhakar attributes it to the low level of awareness among people. This could also be a reason why some of the major operators are yet to provide the service. Moreover, the pricing of the service "" with operators yet undecided whether to go in for a flat fee basis (monthly charge) or per data usage "" is also hampering growth. Besides all this, a dearth of handsets that can support the feature is also a hurdle.At present, Bharti Airtel is providing the service free of charge, while Reliance Communications is charging on per data basis.Mahesh Prasad, president (Application Solutions and Content Group), Reliance Communications, seconds this. "The benefits of IM over SMS "" like the former's ability to provide real-time conversation, chat with many people at the same time and to connect to anyone, anywhere in the world "" are yet to realised," he says.This apart, the main issue is that of availability of an interoperable platform. According to Prasad, IM is a synchronous mode (a type of two-way communication without time delay) of communication and the platform of one service will have to support the other to enable communication between two different operators. Reliance Communications is using a Yahoo platform, a common base across the world, while Bharti Airtel is using its own platform.However, it won't be long before the country latches on to this service, as other service providers are also looking at offering IMs. "Industry players will soon resolve these issues and make it another value-added service in the next one-two years," he says. But will IM replace SMS? "SMS will continue to remain the preferred messaging service to certain types of usage in short- to medium-term," opines Prabhakar.
