Reliance Communications (“RCom”), India’s largest integrated communication services provider and iseemedia Inc. (TSX-V: IEE), a leading provider of messaging and content handling technology, today announced the launch of a ground-breaking SMS-based email service across Reliance GSM and CDMA wireless network in India, serving more than 92 million subscribers. This Email on SMS service effectively empowers RCom subscribers to have their mobile phones to behave like smartphones and receive all their desktop email via SMS. The Email-to-SMS technology is provided by Canada’s iseemedia, a leading provider of low cost wireless email services to operators in the country.
In India where mobile phones have become an important part of everyone’s livelihood the country is adding more mobile phone subscribes each month than any other. According to Informa Telecom & Media; India had 125 million new mobile phone subscribers for the year ending March 2009.
Text-based information services have become particularly popular in agriculture, healthcare and other sectors in India. The challenge for operators has been to deliver more sophisticated services using existing handsets that don’t have access to the Internet. iseemedia’s technology meets that challenge with the possibility to deliver next generation messaging without the cost of having to replace handsets.
Mr. Krishna Durbha, Head – VAS, Reliance Communications said, “iseemedia provides the ideal platform to deliver our next generation service to drive more email usage among our existing subscribers.” We believe our push email service can deliver substantial revenue upside over the years to RCom.”
RCom is leveraging iseemedia’s multi-platform email solution known as iseemail to enable every mobile handset in India to act as a smartphone and enable users to check, download and retrieve email messages using the SMS interface. iseemail supports all types of email messaging systems in India through standard POP3 & IMAP4. It also offers access to consumer messaging from Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo.co.in, Indiatimes emails and more.
Anthony DeCristofaro, President and CEO of iseemedia said, “Mobile connectivity has become more important in everyday lives in India. With Reliance we have the opportunity to promote mobile email to its 92 million subscribers and as a mass market solution to provide full email functionality on nearly 100 per cent of devices used in India. This will allow RCom to increase its customer base as well as drive the adoption of mobile email usage through new value-added services.”
RCom is offering iseemedia’s email service on its pre-paid as well as post-paid platforms as a subscription service charged at Rs.30 and a usage tariff of 0.50 paise per SMS sent. iseemedia receives a percentage of revenue from every user transaction.
About Reliance Communications
Reliance Communications Limited founded by the late Shri Dhirubhai H Ambani (1932-2002) is the flagship company of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group currently has a net worth in excess of Rs. 64,000 crore (US$ 13.6 billion), cash flows of Rs. 13,000 crore (US$ 2.8 billion), net profit of Rs. 8,400 crore (US$ 1.8 billion).
Reliance Communications is India's foremost and truly integrated telecommunications service provider. The Company, with a customer base of 100 million including over 2.5 million individual overseas retail customers, ranks among the Top 5 Telecom companies in the world by number of customers in a single country. Reliance Communications corporate clientele includes 2,100 Indian and multinational corporations, and over 800 global, regional and domestic carriers.
Reliance Communications has established a pan-India, next generation, integrated (wireless and wireline), convergent (voice, data and video) digital network that is capable of supporting best-of-class services spanning the entire communications value chain, covering over 24,000 towns and 600,000 villages. Reliance Communications owns and operates the world's largest next generation IP enabled connectivity infrastructure, comprising over 190,000 kilometers of fibre optic cable systems in India, USA, Europe, Middle East and the Asia Pacific region.
About iseemedia
iseemedia Inc. is a software development company focused on the commercialization of a Service Delivery Platform (iseemailTM) for delivering Blackberry-like email services to the mass market and an advanced Content Delivery Platform (iseedocsTM) for rich media adaptation and extremely cost-efficient delivery to mobile devices. The Company maintains a broad portfolio of issued and pending patents that cover content authoring, streaming and interactive viewing on mobile devices. iseemedia is publicly traded in Toronto (Symbol: IEE.V).
©2010 iseemedia Inc. All rights reserved. iseemedia and iseedocs are either Registered Trademarks or Trademarks of iseemedia Inc. in the United States and or Canada. All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners.
