Last year Mobitel introduced a whole new way of getting informed about latest happenings in Sri Lanka which is through SMS. Under this method registered users will receive a news headline via SMS as it happens. Although the idea was an innovative one, unfortunately Mobitel's news service was not being able to capture the market, as usually. Reason was Mobitel charged Rs 100+VAT per month which is totally a funny amount where average mobile expenditure per month is around Rs 400.Later Dialog also introduced a similar service with co-operation with Reuters which charged Rs 30+VAT per month which was bit affordable.Even though it was affordable, most users disconnected after the trial period of three months. As Dialog is very sensitive on subscriber needs, they abandoned Reuters and made this news service free with the help of Derana News.
Recently Mobitel also reduced the prices to Rs 30+VAT per month as Tigo and Suntel also rolled out a news . however more number of customers will be benefited if this service is provided free of charge by both Tigo and Mobitel.
Registration for SMs News can be done as follows
Mobitel - send an SMS typed REG to 2233
Tigo - send an SMS typed REG to 2233
Suntel - send an SMS typed News Act 1411
Yeah, Dialog's service is quite useful. The latest news even before TV reports and radio!
ReplyDeleteGood to see the rest are following suit...
Thats very true.. But I really love the facility.. You know with the situation currently we need.. news as it happens...
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, it is Mobitel that first offered this service to Sri Lanka and got the ball rolling and forced Dialog to quickly get a news provider. If it was left to Dialog, it may never have happened. Also Rs100 was the first price since no one had an idea of this produce and what was appropriate. Mobitel had several thousand readers at that price. Dialog has before and still puts its needs first and then those of the news providers, that is not good. Dialog is also censoring a lot of news and not letting the news providers do their job.
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