Airtel, Vodafone, Tata Tele to introduce BlackBerry services in India

Airtel, Vodafone-Essar and Tata Teleservices will introduce Research In Motion's (RIM's) BlackBerry services in India. While Tata Tele will offer the BlackBerry 8830 World Edition smartphone, Airtel and Vodafone will offer the Black berry Bold.

The new Bold, priced at Rs34,990, is expected to be available by the end of September 2008. Reliance Communications is the other leading telecom operator to also launch BlackBerry services in the country.

Customers with BlackBerry phones will have a wide range of easy-to-use mobile applications, including phone, email, messaging, organiser, web browser, multimedia and other features. The new smartphone has a sleek and stylish design with a full QWERTY keyboard, intuitive trackball navigation system and large bright display.

Tata Teleservices has also launched the CDMA-based BlackBerry 8830 World Edition, which offers international roaming capability on GSM / GPRS networks as well. The 'One World - One Number' R-UIM (removable user identity module) card powered by TATA Indicom, will enable users to access email and data, as well as place and receive domestic and international calls, nationwide on the TATA Indicom CDMA network in India and globally on GSM/GPRS networks.
 
The BlckBerry launch will place Tata Teleservices as one of the leading firms in end-to-end range of telecom services and make the company a key player in the enterprise space for high value customers in the Indian telecom market, the company said.

The BlackBerry Bold smartphone, to be sold through Airtel and Vodafone-Essar, is the first BlackBerry to support tri-band HSDPA high-speed networks around the world, providing superior functionality and performance for both business professionals and power users.

The BlackBerry Bold smartphone comes with integrated GPS, which can pinpoint the user's location and support location-based applications and services, as well as enterprise-grade Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g). It has a beautiful HVGA (480x320 resolution at 217 ppi) color LCD that is fused to the undersurface of the lens, making images and videos appear in stunning definition and clarity. The smartphone also comes with rich multimedia capabilities including a media player for music, videos and photos and a 2 megapixel camera with video recording.

The BlackBerry Bold smartphone works with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which enables advanced security and IT administration within IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell group wise environments, as well as BlackBerry professional software for small businesses.