CAIRO: QTEL Group and Google have created a new Gmail SMS Chat Service which is to be available in many countries across the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) and Asia regions. In places such as the MENA region and Southeast Asia, Smartphone ownership is significantly higher than the proportion of customers with broadband data access. The services have been extended to Indonesia, the Maldives, Tunisia, Kuwait, Palestine and Algeria with positive responses. Qtel Group customers pay no service fee and it requires no subscription. Chat messages sent from mobile phones are billed at the standard rate and the Gmail service is compatible with any phone that has SMS capabilities. The service, Qtel says, will also be compatible with all operating systems including android or blackberry. The Gmail SMS Chat Service provides Gmail users with a quota of SMS's that they can send to a mobile customer. For every reply a Qtel customer sends, the customer recievs an additional five messages. The service also allows for gmail users to add Qtel Group mobile customers even if they have no Gmail account, allowing for convenient and effective real time chat sessions. In 2010, Qtel Group and Google launched their first service wth Wataniya Mobile Palestine, where the service was successful. The first month saw 310,000 messages sent via the new service. The expansion through Asia and the MENA region has made Qtel Group the first provider to launch this service in five of the 6 markets. BM
