Cell phones to ring in royalty

Spice Telecom, in association with Cellebrum, is set to launch the content uploader by mid-June. This service will also offer back up to users' data on mobile phones.

With new innovations taking place in the world of mobile phones, value added service provider Cellebrum Pvt. Ltd has come up with a new concept of earning royalty from the creative work on your mobile phone.

Apart from saving mobile phone data online on a personal database, users can earn from their innovative photographs, wallpapers or ringtones.

Saket Agarwal, chief operating officer, Cellebrum, speaks to Bhaskar Hazarika from CyberMedia News on the new innovation. The company is planning to launch this application, in association with Spice Telecom, by mid-June. Excerpts from the exclusive interview:

What is content uploader?

This new service from Cellebrum allows users to take a complete back up of the content on their phone, including contacts, calendar, ringtones, video and other data and restore this data in case their phone is lost. Looking at the growing occurrence of phone theft, upgradation of handsets we saw an opportunity to offer an integrated solution that provides customers with full backup and restore services of mobile contacts, calendar, tasks and other data.The data will be stored in a central repository and maintained by us. It is the choice of the subscriber if he wants a part or whole of the data to be publicly shared with other customers. If the subscriber has created a ringtone or a wallpaper, or shot an exclusive photograph, he can wish to share it an earn royalty on each download. It will be a copyright of the owner and he will ear the royalty from each download being made by other subscribers.

How can a subscriber use this application?

What are the requirements for a subscriber to use this service?He can access his data from his GPRS enabled phone or through his PC by using the Internet. We will provide a user ID and a password, which could be accessed from anywhere across the globe. There is no charge for uploading the data but a subscriber will have to pay for each download they make, which is currently being charged by the operator. However, we will keep it at a competitive price to encourage subscribers to download so that the uploader earns a royalty.

How do you foresee the response of the market to this new application?

Well, we see a huge market, which will drive the user-generated content in this sector. There is a huge demand for content with the easy access to the Internet. The most popular ringtone, Crazy Frog witnessed enthusiastic response from mobile subscribers worldwide. It started in the UK and even made way to the Indian market.This is an application to boost the latent talents of the young minds. This is a community-based service and we are optimistic to receive encouraging response from the market. With majority of subscriber own a camera phone, they can share those exclusive photographs as wallpapers, rest depends on the consumers to decide rate the creativity.

When are you planning to launch this service with Spice Telecom?

Will it be an exclusive offer with Spice?We are closely working with Spice to launch this service. We have integrated the entire billing system and working on the price points. We have already made a soft launch for the Spice offering to 50 subscribers. We will be announcing the commercial launch by mid-June. We are targeting to offer this service to 1000 subscribers.We are currently offering this service with Spice Telecom for the first time and Spice will be the first to launch it. But this service will be offered through other service providers as well. We are already in to talks with the rest of the operators but it is at the early stage of discussion.

Where will be the central repository located and who will maintain it? How can a subscriber be assured that his data is safe?

The central repository will be hosted at two data centers of Sify. The central database will be hosted and maintained by Cellebrum.The subscriber will be given a mail ID and a password, and he will have the choice to make his whole or part of the data public or personal. He can access his data through GPRS from his mobile or through the Internet. The data will be safe and secure as in an email account.

CyberMedia News
02,06,2007