The Hindu Business Line : Bharti Airtel launches Bubble Talk in Pune

Pune has got itself another first with the launch of Bubble Talk by Bharti Airtel. The beta trial, which has been on in the city for the past 15 days has been launched today.

Talking to presspersons, Mr Mandeep Bhatia, Chief Operating Officer (Mobility) for Maharashtra and Goa circle said this would be another channel of communication for its customers other than the traditional SMS and voice call.

This facility would allow the users to message in their own voice and in the language of his/her choice and is a short voice message service based on the talk and listen messaging alternative to the type and read text messaging service provided by SMS, he said.

To send a message, the user dials `*' followed by the recipients number and leave a message up to 29 seconds long. The service then sends an SMS notification to the receiver who dials `*0*' to hear the message. The service is charged at Rs 0.75 per minute for sending a bubble message.

Airtel customers on receiving a bubble message can hear it free of cost for the first time and could be stored in the archives also. To retrieve the bubble message from the archive, the user can press `*1*' for which he would be charged at Rs 0.75 per minute for listening to the message. When the message sent is to a non-Airtel number, the user can retrieve the message by keying in the 10-digit number post, which he will be taken to the IVR.