The Hindu : Business : 160by2.com to offer free SMS

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jul 14, 2007
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Business

160by2.com to offer free SMS

A. Saye Sekhar

In talks with Airtel, Idea for the service

The software has in-built spam guard, firewalls
Ads will be customised to the advertiser need

HYDERABAD: 160by2.com, a PC-to-mobile SMS provider, is in talks with cellular service providers Airtel and Idea to offer cell-to-cell SMS (short messaging service) facility to all their subscribers free of cost. Young entrepreneurs from Hyderabad — Satya Kalyan Yerramsetti, Ravindra K. Yerramsetti and a few others — launched www.160by2.com as an allied company to their flagship company, www. smscountry.com, in May this year.

However, the telecom majors raised a few questions on the process of implementation of the proposal and also the revenue model. Mr. Satya Kalyan says the issues raised by the companies are being addressed and hopes that the move translates into a reality by the end of 2007.

Explaining how SMS can be offered free of cost, Mr. Ravindra says half the screen of any mobile phone can be offered for advertisements. Any standard SMS has 160 characters. If 80 characters are left for the user, the remaining 80 characters can be devoted for the ad space.

In fact, 160by2.com is already offering this facility in the PC-to-cell free of cost and advertisers are already participating in the scheme. The users will have to register themselves free of cost by filling up a few fields. The software has in-built spam guard and firewalls. Sanyog Jain, Director of business development, says while the company has roped in big advertisers like Cadbury’s Coca-Cola, John Players, Domino’s, and a few others, its user base is expanding through word of mouth publicity.

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