Short codes has become a big business in India. Apparently, there are some 1,500 short codes, although a third of them are only active. A story in Business Today (sub. req) quotes a Bharti Tele-Ventures executive, “There are around 50 million messages a month going out on short code.” That’s 600 million messages out of a total of 13-15 billion messages a year, and at an average of Rs 3 a pop, it adds up to annual revenues of Rs 180 crore ($40 million), almost half the size of the Rs 400-crore ($90 million) value-added services (VAS) market in mobile telephony. “These numbers can easily double in a year,” says Kaustuv Ghosh, Country Manager, Mobile 365, a US-based messaging solutions company that has recently set up shop in India. By 2010, the market could be 10 times its current size.
Bharti alone has some 500 short codes activated on its network. BSNL‘s network has fewer short codes (click here for the list) though.
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