The mobile market in India is vast, with a great percentage of that market being prepaid. That, unfortunately,  can create a problem, namely users getting stuck without a sufficient calling card balance, which can be devastating in critical situations.

Addressing that issue, Netxcell Limited, a Hyderabad-based application services provider for telecom, has come up with a solution it calls CellSite Mapping that it believes can alleviate the problem, according to a report from Business Standard.

That news source reportedly learned that the chief executive of Netxcell, Debasis Chatterji,  said the location-based service has been designed exclusively for customers who use prepaid mobile service. He explained that when prepaid customers are within the “range of a certain cell tower, the operator concerned would send an SMS through that tower.” The message sent could indicate that the customer’s prepaid mobile balance is low or depleted and it could advise the customer of where to find the nearest recharging center.

“Compared to other countries, India is an evolved value-added services (VAS) market. There are many telecom services and products which other countries have not heard of, since the business pattern or model here is totally different,” Chatterji was quoted as saying, indicating that CellSite Mapping is unique.

According to Chatterji, 90 to 95 percent of India’s 800 million mobile subscriber market is prepaid. Although it has been documented that of the 800 million mobile subscribers in India about 500 million are actually active and operating, Netxcell is said to count 300 million of those 500 million as customers. Given his insight, Chatterji said, “In urban areas, mobile phone penetration is 125 percent. Thus, there is now more scope for such services[like CellSite Mapping] in the semi-urban and rural areas, where mobile penetration is still 35 to40 percent.”

CellSite is not the only new innovation from Netxcell. It announced the development of a single interactive voice response (IVR) service three months ago called Trinity that is has designed to transmit voice content, including songs, as well as video and other data, to end users on a single platform. Chatterji explained that a single IVR service is unique in India because, “Today, data is transmitted through different servers in different locations. For instance, a Telugu person in West Bengal cannot listen to Telugu songs. But, with a single IVR, this is possible, since it is a single platform. The advantage of a single IVR is that by using it from wherever one is, one can hit the server through the operator's service with a single short code. Using this single IVR, Telugu people in Kolkata would be able to listen to and download Telugu content or vice versa.”

Business Standard described the operation of Trinity as “Unlike the traditional manner of circle-wise content, the circle-agnostic Trinity service keeps the server centrally and enables content access from across the country that helps service providers cut costs, besides managing the content services much easily.”

In other news, TMCnet reported, “In a new white paper called “Four Trends Changing the IVR Landscape,” Interact Inc. makes the case for speech-enabling IVR solutions.