New Delhi   

Cell operators' bounty for cricket lovers

By Sandeep Joshi

NEW DELHI, MARCH 12. While the entire country has geared up to enjoy the thrilling and exciting Indo-Pak cricket series, the leading cellular operators in the Capital are also ready with some services and contests for lakhs of cellular subscribers. These mobile operators are targeting particularly those subscribers who would not be there to witness matches live on their television sets. The only thing required to catch up with the excitement will be a GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) phone.

The leading cellular operator, AirTel, has launched a "Live Cricket Scroller", an innovative Java-enabled service, on mobile phones where the scroller will automatically update the score at regular intervals. An AirTel customer is not even required to refresh his mobile screen manually, or make a voice call or for that matter send an SMS asking for an update. Moreover, he will also be able to view bowling and batting analysis of the teams, view charts and graphs of a team's performance in the match including batting team score, wickets fallen, run rate, current two players batting and current player bowling.

Another operator, Hutch, which had brought "live" video replays during the Cricket World Cup last year, will again provide its GPRS users "live" video replays from key moments of the series besides providing score updates to all cricket-loving Hutch subscribers through SMS and call-in facility.

Similarly, Idea Cellular also has plans to keep its subscribers updated about the cricket matches. Its SMS-based service - Cricket Updates - will inform subscribers about match scores after an interval of five and 10 overs in every match.

AirTel has also planned cricket-based contests where subscribers can call 646 and answer the question of the day on Sachin, posed by "Harsha Bhogle". Moreover, subscribers can also SMS "IND" to 2004 to participate in the contest, play the SMS-based cricket game and even get the latest score updates.

The bouquet of SMS services contains "Live Score with Trivia", "Prediction based SMS game", cricket quiz and match schedules. Then there is pre and post-match Analysis where sound bytes will be given by none other than Navjot Singh Sidhu, Waqar Younis and Sandeep Patil.

AirTel has also developed a series of three mobile games (Run with Sachin, Master Blaster Sachin and Sachin Tendulkar's Cricket).

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi

News: Front Page | National | Tamil Nadu | Andhra Pradesh | Karnataka | Kerala | New Delhi | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Updates: Breaking News |

Stories in this Section

• Congress confident of wresting seats from BJP
• High capacity buses a boon for the disabled
• EC catches Jagmohan on the wrong foot
• Four held in exam paper leak case
• Steps for quick action in eve-teasing, molestation cases
• Delhi University to set up School of Design
• Cop remanded for killing during anti-Mandal stir
• Cell operators' bounty for cricket lovers
• A tragedy foretold
• Prayers for Indian cricket team's victory
• Process to relocate Yamuna Pushta slums begins
• Notices on liquor licence auction
• Infighting may make going tough for BJP
• Guard becomes victim of false complaint
• Around The City
• Briefly
• In The Capital Today
• Police in a fix over illegal arms

Copyright © 2004, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu