Airtel Launches Broadband Portal Powered By Google
Wow…I didn’t know that there was such a paucity of web developers and designers in the world that India’s largest telco Airtel had to resign itself to having its broadband consumer portal powered by iGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG). For a company that for years kept mobile users limited to its walled garden, also called Airtel Live, this certainly is a cop-out. Is AirtelLive.com going to be the default homepage for Airtel Broadband subscribers? At present, AirtelLive.com redirects to http://partnerpage.google.com/airtelmail.in , and doesn’t even have an AirtelLive logo. Compare this to Sify.com, which built a content businesses around traffic from its broadband services and cybercafes, largely following the AOL (NYSE: TWX) model.
Then again, can Airtel really compete with the services that Google provides? Users are getting free access to Google Apps, email services, Documents, Calendar etc. Airtel has also partnered with Shaadi.com, 24x7guru and Naukri.com, among others. Airtel Telemedia is also promoting their sister concern - AIS India. There’s news from NDTV, ticket booking powered by Bookmyshow, Games from Indiagames, Music from Soundbuzz and Bollywood news from Bollywoodmantra.com…all hoping that they’ll get some traffic from Airtel broadband subscribers. [via release]
Readers should also remember that AOL is powering the homepage for MTNL users, though it’s fairly easy to set another browser homepage.
Posted In: Technologies / Formats, Broadband, Companies, Airtel, Google
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Comments (7)
Mar 31, 2008 2:15 PM
AirtelLive.com ... Are you kidding me? This is just a domain name that is redirected to the Google Apps offering. this takes about 2 minutes for any sysadmin that knows anything about A, CNAME AND MX DNS records.
Mar 31, 2008 11:26 PM
Aligning with Google is a good idea considering that it is much more than a search portal. It has a range of open applications and is the future of web access. With Image,Google maps and documents, Google Talk etc. it is going to be an advantage in the long run.
Apr 1, 2008 3:37 AM
I think Airtel has done a great thing by aligning itself to the best on web - Google. Instead of recreating the wheel is makes perfect sense to leverage the power which already exists. And the model of alignments and business partnerships always profitable and benefits everyone. This has always worked well for Airtel in the past.
Apr 1, 2008 6:43 PM
Nikhil, I actually thought this was an Apr Fools Day joke! Its unbelievable that they actually issued a press release proudly stating they were the FIRST and with quotes like this:
“Airtellive.com is a milestone in Airtel’s broadband strategy,” said Atul Bindal
More cribbing here:
http://www.techtonic.info/2008/04/01/the-jokes-on-airtel/
Apr 2, 2008 1:43 AM
Indian companies in general are so short-term focussed. Even in the largest companies there’s little effort to do any R&D;. All Bharti’s companies are pretty much services companies.. Insurance, Retail, Telcom etc.
It appears that only Tata group among the biggies has any western approach to building companies.
Aug 4, 2008 4:59 AM
This is a good move as powered by Google it provides a better platform for the user base to use the technology.
Aug 11, 2008 4:30 AM
can anyone tell me where I can book cheap tickets for indian destinations…?