(21 June 2007 8:30 pm)

MUMBAI: Telecom service provider Bharti Airtel and mobile media technology firm Affle have announced a partnership to make the revolutionary SMS 2.0 service available to all Airtel customers in Delhi and NCR.

According to an official release, the Affle powered SMS 2.0 application is the world's first major upgrade to commonly used SMS. In addition to text-messaging, SMS 2.0 will converge enhanced messaging - custom text colors, fun emoticons, and scheduled SMS, content and advertising. It integrates itself with the usual user interactions by residing as the default SMS application on the handset.

Bharti Airtel mobile services content and new product development head P.S. Parasuram said, "We selected SMS 2.0 as we feel it enriches our users' experience with SMSing, while at the same time creating a viable and extremely exciting revenue model."

Affle south Asia ED Anuj Kumar said, "We are excited to partner with Airtel in India. SMS2.0 is a media, for which the leading content partners and advertisers, are already creating customized campaigns. This is because the users value our media, and find the content, promotions, and messaging features extremely engaging."

The advertisements on SMS 2.0 have a set of "call-to-action" features such as call now, call-me-back, buy-now, launch video, answer-survey, view web page amongst others. Airtel users in Delhi and NCR region can download this application for free by sending "sms2" to 121.