Airtel and Affle have joined hands together and
announced the launch of SMS2.0 – the world’s first upgrade to SMS. Airtel is
the first in India
to offer this innovative service to its 55 million customers.

SMS2.0 enables an interactive and
non-intrusive platform on the mobile phone that allows Airtel users to discover
a host of relevant content services along with enhanced messaging features.

“SMS2.0 is unique as it has leveraged the popularity of SMS, and has converged
messaging, content, and contextual advertising into one seamless application,
which resides as the default SMS application on the customer’s mobile handset”,
release said.

Commenting on the launch of SMS 2.0, Mr. Sanjay Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer,
Mobile Services, Airtel, said, “Trends indicate that youth and young
professionals are more active users of messaging. SMS2.0 represents a huge
opportunity for Airtel to differentiate itself and further gain both mind-share
& market-share in these segments.

The message personalization options include additional features like composing
& sending messages with a variety of text & background colours and
interesting emoticons. The content experience is driven around leveraging the
eyeball assured nature of SMS, and delivering user relevant content (like News,
Jokes, Movie updates, Cricket, Astrology etc.) which is seamlessly integrated
into the messaging experience.

The SMS2.0 application is a ‘Free Upgrade’ to the regular SMS application. To
download SMS2.0, the Airtel customer simply sends “SMS2” to 543210. There is no
charge for downloading and for subsequent content delivery on this platform;
the SMS charges remain unchanged and according to the existing mobile plan.