Reliance Infocomm would enter into promotion of films, theatre and other entertainment events in a big way to give a fillip to its 'Showtime' sub-brand of RelianceIndia Mobile under the R-World platform.

Announcing this in Kolkata on Monday, Kaushik Roy, marketing head of Reliance Infocomm, said that with a subscriber base of 7 million across the country, R-World had already emerged as a major channel which could be used for entertainment purposes.

He said that unlike GSM operators, Reliance Infocomm, which uses CDMA technology for mobile telephony, was well poised to provide these kinds of value-added services to the subscribers.

Asked about the usage rate of R-World, Roy said that out of 7 million subscribers, 70 per cent were occasional users, adding that the balance 30 per cent were hardcore users of the service.

Roy said that R-World, which was a free service at the moment, might be charged depending upon the content which was to be provided by third parties.

Reliance Infocomm also announced tie-up with a Bengali film production house to promote Warish, slated for release on April 14.

About improving the video service on R-World, Roy said the company would shortly introduce E-Video.

He said that once E-Video was launched, the transmission quality on R-World would improve substantially.

Asked about the response of Reliance pre-paid, he said that the company was adding nearly 450,000 subscribers per month.

Roy said the company would also promote regional films, as well as English feature films through R-World.

About R-connect, Roy said that nearly 300,000 subscribers were using this service for Internet surfing.

R-World is based on Java and was being used for providing multi-media services.