They ought to negotiate… totally agree with you Nikhil. But the situation should not have come to that.

My point being, why are the service providers getting so ruffled about the whole thing? First Airtel and now Vodafone:

1. Vodafone’s subscription services are better than MyToday’s. So loyalty there is bound to be guaranteed.
2. And the consumers like their services for FREE. The internet is a witness for that.

What Vodafone is doing is a classic example of “Fighting the internet”. Eric Schmidt has reiterated the point time and again on the online front.

It’s just that the mobile online world is a new and the revenue models are still getting ironed out. And could take years. I am sure Vodafone knows this, but they want to pull their weight around till the field gets settled, so that they can make all the money they can. But they should be careful not to alienate their consumers in the meanwhile.

As everybody says, The Online Platform in India is going to be Mobile. And companies like MyToday are kinda the pioneers of Mobile Content Monetization. Vodafone should not come in their way. Let MyToday be given the freedom to learn and experiment. So that when they get the formula right, Vodafone can follow suit. They have the moolah to not worry about first mover advantages.

I might be speaking through my hat, but hey, it’s just my two bits.

Google provides a similar service does it not? The choices are huge-ranging from technology to entretainment to biz.... does vodafone plan to take on google sms services as well? that would be fun...

the fact being there is no point in fighting FREE... In a natural evolution point of view we in the online world will slowly be surely be led down that path.

Instead of fighting it Vodafone should be playin along and providing better services for FREE and take on the likes of MyToday or Google, if it can, else forget it. Concentrate on your Core of being the carriage.

Vodafone will take one of the above steps for sure in the near future... they are a big fat conglomerate and they wanna throw their fat around a bit...