Mobile Instant Messaging: a Possible Big Hit for Mobile Markets

At least that is what you're going to experience if you live in India, where mobile phone carriers, as far as the rumors say, are planning to deliver on the mobile market a new service through a central hub that will give the 100 million GSM customers in their country the possibility to use an instant messaging service, with the help of the messaging technology implemented within the mentioned hub.

Manoj Kohli, President of the Bharti Airtel, said that "we in Bharti Airtel are greatly excited about the potential for Mobile IM in India. We are actively participating in the COAI's special committee on IM, which comprises all Indian GSM operators, and is working for an interconnect hub solution to ensure seamless IM interoperability between all mobile networks. Our common goal is to launch mobile IM in India by early 2007."

The future messaging technology will permit every service subscriber to remain connected with the people added in the friend list, with no restriction of the platform of the operator they use.

In Malaysia and Singapore, discussions relating the development of the future inter-operable IM services already have come to the expected ending, thus, in Singapore SingTel Mobile and StarHub carriers are in the process of developing the beginning platform for the new service, and in Malaysia, all three major mobile carriers, respectively Celcom, DiGi Telecommunications and Maxis have agreed to launch the IM service sometime during next year.

Rob Conway, GSMA CEO, declared that "the IM services in India, Malaysia and Singapore will all be based on a technical and commercial framework designed by the GSMA to maximize ease-of-use, interoperability and reliability, while minimizing spam and viruses".