MUMBAI: Increasing consumers’ interest and aggressive promotional strategies adopted by companies are likely to drive the mobile value-added services in India, according to RNCOS.

Among various other VAS, music and gaming are going to be the major driving forces boosting revenue and growth of telecom sector in India. Backed by young Indians, music and gaming are going to be cherry on the pie for the Indian telecom sector growth, with value-added services estimated to reach over Rs 165 billion (Rs 16500 crore) by 2010 as per the recent study titled Indian Telecom Analysis (2008-2012) by RNCOS.

The report found that the pressure on profits and revenues has forced operators to look at other avenues using the same platform. In this regard, MVAS has an immense potential to grow as services like mobile banking, mobile commerce and mobile location based services. Considering this fact, companies are adopting various promotional policies by offering several schemes in order to attract customers.

Additionally, mobile VAS has been expanding to rural areas where more VAS in banking, gaming data and TV segments will be seen. This, in turn, will further improve the profit margins of the service providers over the current SMS VAS. Moreover, with 3G mobile services set to rollout in India, service providers would increasingly bank upon the VAS segment to bring in additional revenues. Hence, wireless teleconferencing, multi-player online games, m-commerce and larger screen-sized videos will gain momentum too.

As mobile VAS is offered on multiple platforms such as SMS, voice and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) enabled services, consumers availing these services are spread in every corner of the country due to the telecom revolution. Strong growth in the subscriber base of the telecom sector is also taking the business of mobile VAS to new heights in the country.