Bharti Airtel and Iffco Kisan Sanchar (IKSL) are soon going to launch Blackberry look alike mobile phone for the rural masses. Airtel and IKSL will formally launch their rural telephone company JV on Friday, May 2, 2008. IKSL will use its network for marketing whereas Airtel will be the service provider. A pilot project undertaken since the end of 2007 has obtained a great response from the rural masses. JV aims at an annual growth of 20% and expects that there will be more than 150 million mobile users by the end of 2011. Services are already available in some of the districts of Tamil Nadu and the rural masses of UP are also very eager for the services to come.

 

While conducting the pilot project, Sinocell mobile phones were used which was priced at Rs 4000 for the widescreen Blackberry version. The phones had all the modern features. People could access instant messaging via e-mail and it also gave information about the prices of various commodities. It is expected that the smaller screen version may cost around Rs 2000. Iffco is also expected to launch its own mobile phone very soon.

 

Since electricity is a problem in the rural areas so the phone will come with a hand-cranked mobile charger. The charger will charge the phone within 3 to 7 minutes. The phone will have two year warranty and Airtel plans to set up towers in the far off villages so that the users don’t have to face network problems.