Voice Mailing: BSNL Kickstarts a New Model

When Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) unveiled its Answering
Machine Service for the city of Hyderabad, it probably flagged off a new
paradigm in the communications space. From now onwards, BSNL users will be able
to store voice messages for those calls that come when they are not present to
attend the call. Powered by VoiceGate’s Integrated Communication Server (ICS),
common citizens of Hyderabad will now be able to have an additional mailbox to
store messages.

The system has a capacity of 3.6 MB and allows a user to have
10 messages per box with every message being of one-minute duration. In all, the
city of Hyderabad has about seven lakh landline users and the company is
targeting to provide the facility of mailbox to one-lakh users within Hyderabad
by the end of March 2003.

VoiceGate, the Canada-based company with its Indian
headquarters at Hyderabad, is having a revenue-sharing partnership with BSNL
where in it is going to share 30 paisa per call for the first year and 24 and 21
paisa for the second and third years respectively. According to the conditions
of the agreement, the company will share the revenue collected in every
two-months time.

"Although we have invested more than Rs 25 lakh for the
smooth running of the system, we are not emphasizing on the revenue part as of
now. First we want to prove our quality of service and then the rest will
follow. We are already engaged in last stages of talks with the Bangalore
telecom circle for providing a similar answering system for more than 9 lakh
users in Bangalore," Syed Mohammed, managing director, VoiceGate
Technologies India, said.

Users wanting to go for answering machine service will have
to fill a form available at all the telephone exchanges. After initial screening
of the forms, the required data is entered into AP Telecom’s DotSoft software.
After that, the users’ information is given to VoiceGate and they provide the
mailbox to that particular user.

The voice mail system operates on Windows NT environment and
its nature to work on multi-tasking Windows NT environment allows running
multiple applications simultaneously.

To activate the services, users will have to dial 9353. They
can also dial 9353-1234567 to get basic information about the system. "We
are trying to communicate to the users how to use this service properly and we
have three people attending the calls," Syed Mohammed informed.

Driven by the increased domestic focus, VoiceGate is
targeting to achieve more than Rs 25 crore during the current financial year.
"Last year, we did about Rs 1.5 crore but this year it will be an
exponential growth for us as we have entered into the Indian market and are well
aware of the market dynamics over here," he explained.

The company has a work force of 28 people in India working
closely with their 50 Canadian counterparts to design and develop IVR based
systems. In India it is already having its offices in Mumbai and Bangalore and
is planning to open up its office in Delhi as well as in Chennai. "As we
move forward we are going to see a lot of activity in India with regards to our
product offering so it will be ideal for us to have office in the metro
cities," he added.

Zia Askeri

CNS