Update: Personal Instant Messaging Services in Latin America
About a month ago, GSM Association issued a press release announcing Personal Instant Messaging Services Go Live in Asia with the commercial launch of IM in India (Aircel, Bharti Airtel, BPL Mobile, BSNL, Idea, MTNL, Reliance Telecom, Spice and Vodafone-Essar) and Malaysia (DiGi Telecommunications and Maxis), which allows customers of those networks to send each other instant messages using their mobile phones.
According to GSMA, more than 40 mobile operators worldwide are developing Personal IM services.
This initiative has taken root in Latin America with Telefonica Movistar leading the way with their SMS 2.0 initiative. SMS 2.0 is Telefonica's commercial name for the same service, which GSMA calls Personal Instant Messaging. GSMA has been working hard for the last two years to support the development of the technical and commercial framework for this service.
In Latin America, Telefonica Movistar is already looking into deploying this service in different operations. Brazil operators are also looking into this service, it is expected they will launch during 2008.
It seems that MSN's lack of interest in the region will end up helping GSMA's initiative, as we had mentioned previously (see here and here). GSMA has mentioned in the past that the first step is interconnection between networks but eventually they want to extend this interconnection to include portals such as MSN, AOL and Yahoo.
While Personal Instant Messaging still carries the stigma of failed launches, the work done by GSMA seems to have all the elements in place to become one of the most successful VAS services. After several years of trying to gain MSN's approval for the service, it seems that operators in Latin America have found the perfect formula to bring messaging to the next level.
According to GSMA, more than 40 mobile operators worldwide are developing Personal IM services.
This initiative has taken root in Latin America with Telefonica Movistar leading the way with their SMS 2.0 initiative. SMS 2.0 is Telefonica's commercial name for the same service, which GSMA calls Personal Instant Messaging. GSMA has been working hard for the last two years to support the development of the technical and commercial framework for this service.
In Latin America, Telefonica Movistar is already looking into deploying this service in different operations. Brazil operators are also looking into this service, it is expected they will launch during 2008.
It seems that MSN's lack of interest in the region will end up helping GSMA's initiative, as we had mentioned previously (see here and here). GSMA has mentioned in the past that the first step is interconnection between networks but eventually they want to extend this interconnection to include portals such as MSN, AOL and Yahoo.
While Personal Instant Messaging still carries the stigma of failed launches, the work done by GSMA seems to have all the elements in place to become one of the most successful VAS services. After several years of trying to gain MSN's approval for the service, it seems that operators in Latin America have found the perfect formula to bring messaging to the next level.
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