Airtel Ghana launches Voice SMS for customers on Kirusa Platform

Accra, Ghana and New Providence, NJ, Monday, December 13, 2010: Bharti Airtel, a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 19 countries across Asia and Africa, today announced the launch of Kirusa Voice SMS across its network in Ghana. This offering is based on the pioneering Voice SMS technology from Kirusa, the world’s leading vendor of Voice SMS and a leading developer of mobile value added services.

Voice SMS allows Airtel customers to send messages by voice, eliminating the need to type. The ease of use of the technology also allows the illiterate population who cannot send text messages to experience the emotion and convenience absent in text messaging. Use of Voice SMS by mobile phone users is gaining global relevance for its benefits in surpassing the limitations of text messages.

Commenting on the launch, Philip Sowah, Managing Director for Airtel Ghana, said, “We are delighted to offer an extremely customer friendly Voice SMS service for our customers in Ghana. Airtel wants to make mobile telephony accessible to everyone in Africa. In Ghana this service will give more customers the freedom to communicate and express their emotions with the voice SMS service. Kirusa was chosen to offer this service as it has the most advanced Voice SMS offering as well as a platform that supports several additional Value Added Services.”

Airtel Ghana customers just have to dial ‘*’ followed by the number of the person they wish to send the message to, and speak a short message for up to 30 seconds in any language. The recipient gets a notification message from the sender and can dial *0* to hear new voice messages, or retrieve previously listened voice messages by dialing *1*. Voice SMS messages can be replied to, forwarded, saved, or deleted.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Inderpal Singh Mumick, CEO and Founder of Kirusa, said, “With this launch, Airtel customers in Ghana will get a very convenient option to reach out to their family and friends. We are hopeful that this service will introduce a new way to communicate for Ghana, and prove to be a huge revenue resource for Airtel Ghana.”

About Airtel in Africa

Airtel is the new brand name for the 16 Zain operations across Africa which were acquired by Airtel International in June 2010. Airtel is driven by the vision of providing affordable and innovative mobile services to all. Airtel has African operations in: Burkina Faso, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Airtel International is a Bharti Airtel company.

For more information visit: www.airtel.com

About Bharti Airtel Limited

Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 19 countries across Asia and Africa. The company offers mobile voice & data services, fixed line, high speed broadband, IPTV, DTH, turnkey telecom solutions for enterprises and national & international long distance services to carriers. Bharti Airtel has been ranked among the six best performing technology companies in the world by BusinessWeek. Bharti Airtel had over 191 million customers across its operations at the end of September 2010.

For more information visit: www.airtel.in

About Kirusa

Kirusa is one of the leading global developers of Mobile Social Media and Value Added Services enabling mobile subscribers to reach out to their family and friends. Kirusa’s solutions include the hugely successful Kirusa Voice SMS service, the world’s most advanced Voice SMS solution, used by over 30 carriers around the world. Kirusa has pioneered a suite of social media applications that facilitate mobile subscribers to interact through voice, including the Call-n-Tweet application which helps users update their Twitter status using voice. Kirusa provides an open platform with APIs to enable third parties to offer mobile applications services to mobile subscribers. Used by mobile subscribers millions of times daily, Kirusa solutions are built on its patented and patent pending technology and its highly reliable and scalable open multimodal platform. Kirusa has been recognized as one of top 100 technology companies by Silicon India, and one of top 25 emerging technology companies by Smart Techie magazine. Headquartered in New Jersey and led by an experienced team of wireless telecom executives and technologists, Kirusa has offices in three continents. ‘Kirusa Voice SMS,’ is a trademark of Kirusa, Inc.

For more information visit: www.kirusa.com.

Media Contacts

Airtel Ghana
Kenneth Kwawu
Ogilvy Africa Media Ghana
+233268811437

Kirusa
Navneet Anand
GreyMatters Communications
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