Monday, August 8 2005 19:58 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: India's leading cellular company, Hutch today (Aug 8, 2005) announced the launch of its service on the voice response platform in three regional languages--Kannada, Telugu and Tamil---for its subscribers in Karnataka.

This valued-added service would be in addition to the Hindi and English service currently available to its over six lakh subscribers spread over 200 cities in Karnataka, Samuel Selvakumar, Operations Director, South, told reporters.

The service would enable subscribers to access a range of services in the language of their choice, including ringtones, caller tunes and jokes, he said.

Hutch subscribers from the State could now download popular songs from Tamil, Telugu and Kannada cinema by choosing from the 500 ringtones available. Depending on the handset, subscribers could download, singtone, polytone or montonone for Rs 20, Rs 10 and Rs seven respectively.

For caller tunes, customers could choose from a range of over 650 tunes from the three languages, including those from latest movies and devotional tunes for a monthly fee of Rs 30 for three new tunes and Rs 10 for subsequent tunes.

They could also choose from over 100 jokes and gift a joke to a friend through the Hutch network, he said.

Beginning its operation in the State three years ago, Hutch has witnessed an over 50 per cent growth in the State last year and is expecting to expand its subscriber base with the new value added service.

The additional language service was currently available only in the voice format and not in the predictive text format. "We are exploring the text format", he said.

Hutch, which has over 8 million subscribers in India is also planning similar services in Marathi and Bengali.