BSNL has partnered up with a French company BE-Bound to offer data connectivity through SMS in areas with no internet connection or signal breaks.
Both the companies have signed a business partnership agreement on January 22 to jointly market the service in India.
“We were trying to get SMS based data service technology on our own but learned that Be-Bound has already developed this technology and has been given a patent for it. This technology is very good to support operations of apps when there is no Internet connection,” BSNL Chairman and Managing Director Anupam Shrivastava told PTI after signing the pact.
The technology will be integrated into mobile apps. The app will check for network connectivity and in case it does not receive any data connectivity for SMS based connectivity it will send a command to the Be-Bound server.
“Be-Bound server will facilitate SMS connectivity after getting a command from the app. The app will also send SMS from user’s account because for connectivity we need to send SMS to and fro. We know that there is a limit of 100 SMS per day per subscriber which is sufficient for this service,” Be-Bound Country Manager Harkaran Singh Sachdev said.
Be-Bound has commercially launched the service in France and is running a pilot version of the service in African countries.
“We are in talks with some of the apps and seeing traction from firms in BFSI segment, logistics, and others. We have done a proof of concept with some of them and now soon convert them into a commercial agreement,” Sachdev said.
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