The Hindu Business Line : Bharti signs $100-m deal with IBM

VALUE-ADDED SERVICES: Mr Manoj Kohli (left), President, Bharti Airtel Ltd; and Mr Satish Khatu, General Manager - Global Technology Services, IBM Asia-Pacific, at a press conference in the Capital on Thursday. - Kamal Narang

New Delhi , Aug. 3

Telecom service provider Bharti Airtel on Thursday signed a $100-million deal with IT major IBM to set up content and applications delivery platform for its 25 million subscribers.

The platform will enable Bharti to bring all its value added services and applications such as ring tones, hello tunes and interactive features under one umbrella apart from developing a suit of new offerings.

IBM will develop, manage and operate the services delivery platform (SDP) for Bharti. The new deal is in addition to the $ 750 million outsourcing contract given to IBM in 2004 for managing Bharti's IT needs including billing and customer management systems.

`Enabling integration environment'

"The implementation of SDP will enable Bharti Airtel to have an integrated environment that will incorporate all of Airtel's content and applications services under one platform," said Mr Manoj Kohli, President, Bharti Airtel.

Simply put the new platform will enable Airtel subscribers, including fixed line telephone users to access the various services being offered by the company from a single point. At present, each service has a different consumer interface. The content providers to Bharti Airtel will also gain, as they will be able to publish content once and distribute through multiple channels. At present, content providers have to separately offer solutions for SMS, MMS, wireless application protocol or broadband. The platform will cover integrated portal, content management, digital rights management and messaging gateway.

Mr. Satish Khatu, General Manager, Global Technology Services, IBM Asia Pacific said, "This implementation allows Bharti to offer significantly enhanced spectrum of content and value-added services to its customers".

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