Twitter tapped by Reliance in OTT partnership

Mobile operators are increasingly seeing the value of partnering with Over The Top (OTT) service providers to mutual benefit. This week Indian carrier Reliance Communications struck a deal with social network Twitter to effectively subsidise data access for a limited period of time.

The promotional prepaid plan gives subscribers 90 days of free and unlimited Twitter usage. Charges will only be incurred if users leave the Twitter service by following a link, for example, but they will be warned they are doing so by a popup message.

The partnership, which is the first of its kind in India, has been timed to come into play as the Twenty20 cricketing season gets into full swing.

While there is no information available on the finer details of the agreement, more than 55 per cent of respondents to the Telecoms.com Industry Survey 2013 felt that OTT players should subsidise the cost of the traffic they generate. Then again, there’s a clear model here for Reliance to drive data revenues from users exploring beyond the Twitter sandbox, or maintaining their service subscription beyond 90 days.