Advanced Info Service (AIS) is offering to pay its subscribers who have multimedia messaging (MMS) mobile phones to provide pictures or video clips for sale as downloadable content.

AIS has teamed up with leading portal site sanook.com to promote the concept of "self-generated content" for its MMS phone users.

Pictures or video clips made on their mobile phones can be wirelessly posted on the sanook.com homepage. If the pictures or clips are downloaded by others, AIS will share its revenues with the contributor on a 50:50 basis per download.

AIS will promote the MMS content at the low price of Bt1 per download to encourage traffic, and contributors can post their MMS content on sanook.com free of charge.

Generally, AIS charges Bt6 to send an MMS message, while the cost of MMS content varies from Bt6 to Bt30 per piece.

The project begins tomorrow and will last for seven months. The theme for the contributed MMS contents will change from month to month, beginning with "Freshy Student".

Pratthana Leelapanang, AIS's strategic-planning and lab manager, said the project would create an MMS community and boost the company's MMS traffic.

"We believe about 10,000 subscribers will participate in the project," he said.

AIS has about 6 million subscribers whose mobile phones have MMS and camera features. The number is expected to grow to 8 million by the end of the year.

Pratthana said there were about 12 million MMS mobile-phone users in Thailand.

AIS began its MMS service in 2004, when it had only 400,000 active subscribers who sent a total of 10 million MMS messages. Those numbers reached 25 million messages from about 1 million senders in 2005 and 35 million messages from 1.4 million senders last year.

The availability of MMS handsets and the expansion of high-speed data-transmission networks have contributed to the growth in MMS traffic. AIS is aiming at revenues of Bt8.5 billion from its overall data services this year, up from Bt7.5 billion last year.

Sirivish Toomgum

The Nation