Wednesday 12 September 2012

Airtel to launch voice-based map services

With Google and Nokia already having come out with map services, the telecommunications giant Airtel has also decided to test its mettle in the navigation services market. The company has started its own turn-by-turn voice navigation service. The new app is named ‘SmartDrive’ map application. 
Only about a week ago, Google has also unveiled a similar service on the same platform on its present map service. It is believed more operators will soon join the fray to provide similar services. 

There would be no cost to the customers to just view the map, but for navigation they would have to pay for Rs 99 per month. For live traffic data, the customers will have to pay Rs 49/month. Data browsing will be free of charge for the Airtel customers till November 30. 
The SmartDrive app service would also be able to suggest alternative routes if there is heavy traffic on the roads, and the customers would be able to search for restaurants, theatres and shopping malls and similar entertainment avenues as well. 
Hemant Joshi, Telecom Leader at Deloitte, said: “The average revenue per user is falling, subscriber base increase is not happening and there is uncertainty in regulation. Telecom operations are looking at non-voice revenues, things like data services.” 
The voice based map service from the SmartDrive app will be available in Delhi and NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore. Later it will be extended to Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune. The maps for the service have been sourced from Navteq. The other map service providers include Mapmyindia, Garmin and TomTom.

Source:
http://cablequest.org/news/new-media/item/1093-airtel-to-launch-voice-based-map-services.htmlSource: http://cablequest.org/news/new-media/item/1093-airtel-to-launch-voice-based-map-services.html

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