Leading online destination MSN India and messaging service provider Mobile 365 have forged 'strategic' alliance with five more cellular operators in India that would allow MSN Hotmail users receive and sent email to their MSN accounts from their mobile phones.
MSN India, with over 360 million users worldwide, said its new partners were Reliance IndiaMobile (RIM), Reliance GSM, Tata Teleservices, Spice Punjab and Spice Karnataka.
MSN India and Mobile 365 had forged similar alliances with Airtel and BPL earlier to enable their subscribers to access their Hotmail emails and chat with their MSN buddies on SMS anywhere, anytime.
Around 15 million Reliance subscribers (both CDMA and GSM), seven million Tata customers and 1.5 million Spice users will now be able to avail of the facility.
In February 2005, MSN India also launched MSN Hotmail and Messenger via two-way SMS with Hutch, with more than nine million subscribers.
Under the agreements, users of MSN Hotmail will have the option to receive email sent to their MSN Hotmail accounts via SMS on their mobile phones -- anytime and anywhere.
They will also be able to reply to those email messages directly to the sender's inbox using SMS, as well as perform other common tasks directly from their phone.
"The MSN Messenger/Hotmail service via SMS is currently available to 70 per cent of the Indian mobile user base. MSN and Mobile 365 expect to expand the service to cover 100 per cent of the Indian mobile market very soon, Rohit Dadwal, MSN's head of communications services for South Asia, said.
