Reliance Comm. shakes hands with Asianet

People across India can now watch Kerala's leading television channel Asianet on their Reliance mobile as the Reliance Communications has tied up with Asianet Malayalam Television Channel to provide news and other premium programmes aired by the channel on mobile phones.

Addressing a press conference after announcing the launch of the service on Friday, Kerala circle head of Reliance Communications, Ashok Ghose and Asianet Managing Editor, K.P. Mohan told media persons that the news and programmes being aired by Asianet would be provided on the data service suite of Reliance Mobile.

“People across the country can not only watch the video on mobile but also download clips of popular programmes aired by the channel,” Kerala circle head of Reliance Communications Ashok Ghose told reporters here, Friday.

The subscribers would have to pay only downloading charges for a session and it would not be metered minute by minute. The duration of the session would not be tallied for fixing the rates.

At present, access to streaming content, at Rs. 15 per session, is only available on select Nokia mobile phones. Streaming of Video clips of news and other programmes, available on all Java-enabled phones, can be downloaded at rates ranging from Rs. 7 to Rs. 10 per clip, depending on the content.

Reliance Communication Application Solution President, Mahesh Prasad said the initiative was in line with the company's commitment to fulfilling customer aspirations that was changing constantly.

By adding to this, Ghose said, “Across the world, TV on mobile has registered an impressive growth and the sales of TV-enabled handsets grew by 140 percent this year.”

Though the company has already tied up with some other channels like Aaj Tak, CNBC, Eenaadu TV, NDTV and Times Now for the same service, but, Prasad said this was the first such arrangement the company has had with a Malaylam Television channel.

Asianet vice-president (programmes) Sreekantan Nair was also present on the occasion.