Orange, Rediff Tie Up For Wap Services

Orange, the cellular service provider in Mumbai, has entered into a strategic alliance with rediff.com to launch WAP (wireless application protocol) services.

The services, the first by a cellular operator in the country, will enable Orange customers to browse high-quality Internet content on their mobile phones, thus unleashing the power of the Internet onto their palms.

Orange customers can access rediff.com on WAP-enabled handsets for the latest news updates including business, a new calendar service, daily horoscopes as well as Bombay Stock Exchange and Nasdaq stock indices by dialing into the Orange home

page on their handset and then choosing the information required.

 

The tie-up will levarage rediff.com's editorial and e-commerce expertise in creating quality content for WAP.

Rediff.com also offers Orange customers a special calendar service which is a free on-line `event manager' to achedule, keep track of appointments and tasks.

The introduction of WAP by Orange and rediff.com will be the first stage of convergence at the customer's end and is an upgrade of the existing value-added Orange Text messaging services.

Anouncing the alliance at a joint news conference, the rediff.com chairman-cum-chief executive officer Ajit Balakrishnan said "the full power of Internet will be available thriough the WAP technology to all Orange customers, anywhere and at anytime."

The Hutchison Max Telecom Ltd managing director-cum-chief executive officer Asim Ghosh said, "This tie-up with rediff.com is a natural step for Orange in its commitment to offer its customers leading adge services in leading-edge time."

WAP helps present data through a simple, convenient interface minus heavy graphics on mobile receivers such as mobile phone screens, using wireless markup language (WML). It enables users to easily surf the internet and pull up content of their choice.

WAP technology will enable applications for mobile customers like _ get the latest in news, views and weather reports on an almost real-time basis, male payments for utilities like electricity and telephones, conduct m-commerce transactions for shopping, travel, ticketing etc notifications of e-mail and bills.

With Orange targeting 10 million customers by May 2000, the footprint of the Orange brand will cover almost 100 million people in eight countries.

Rediff.com recorded 70 million page views during March 2000. At the recently concluded opinion poll of internet users conducted by Outlook-MDRA across six cities, rediff was voted as the most popular Indian websites and e-commerce site.