RCom plans set to launch mGovernance for villages

Telecom service provider Reliance Communication, a Reliance ADA Group company, plans to make headway in the hitherto unexplored mGovernance (mobile governance) sector by launching the service in select rural pockets. While Reliance Communication is already working with the West Bengal government to provide various e-governance services in semi-urban and rural markets in the state, the company is soon expected to launch the service in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, said a senior official of the company.

The mGovernance services the company intends to offer will help the rural folks to communicate with agricultural experts; obtain information about the fertiliser; find out the prices of various agricultural products in nearby mandis; weather report and local helplines for various requirements. The company is also developing local applications including group messaging to facilitate panchayats and or district level bodies to disseminate information of local importance to rural people. Since most of the local applications require local contents, the company has partnered freelancers and developers as part of the Reliance Development Programme.

“We are looking at some focus areas in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. Our approach will be to launch the service in rural and semi-urban areas where our subscriber base is quite high, and we can find this by monitoring our network towers in these localities,” Krishna Durba, head — VAS, business and marketing application, Reliance Communications told Business Standard on Tuesday. He was in Bangalore to attend Comsnets ‘09, an international conference on communication systems and networks.

He, however, said the mGovernance services to be offered may not be a good revenue driver in the short-run since the company is planning to offer this service free to the subscribers in the first two years. “However, this will definitely help us increase the subscriber base in rural pockets,” he added.

“We don’t have local level of information as it requires in-depth knowledge about issues relating to local areas. Most contents and solutions will be provided by our partners who are part of the developer programme, on a revenue-sharing basis,” added Durba.

Reliance Communication is also planning to launch the MCommerce service for transferring money to bank accounts, in the ongoing calendar. Earlier, RBI has issued a set of guidelines relating to the mCommerce business. “We are already piloting the money-transfer application in partnership with some leading banks, and a lot of action to this respect is expected to happen in 2009,” said Durbha.

The mobile value-added services (VAS) market is estimated to be close to Rs 5,000 crore of which the entertainment applications constitute close to 35 per cent of the market. The contribution of VAS to the telecom service providers’ revenue in India varies between 5-13 per cent.