Sunil Sood in Calcutta on Tuesday. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta, Jan. 21: Hutch has launched HutchAlive — a personalised, interactive broadcast service for its subscribers. The service will be simultaneously introduced in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

Hutchison is offering the service jointly with Israel-based Celltick. The company offers interactive broadcast platform for cellular operators which enables them to promote value-added services on SMS, voice or WAP. The deal was signed in November last year and is currently being deployed across all Hutchison circles.

“The facility uses broadcast technology to deliver a wide range of text-based infotainment services,” says Sunil Sood, chief operating officer of Hutchison Telecom East Limited (HTEL). “Messages are delivered simultaneously to a large number of mobile phones with a frequency of one message per minute.”

The service is being provided to subscribers free of cost. Regular rates for SMS, voice or WAP is applicable if the customer initiates a transaction.

HutchAlive also doubles up as a 32K SIM and provides benefits of an extended memory of 250 phonebook names and 15 SMS storage.