eGovWatch: AIR news SMS service users cross 6 lakh mark

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The number of users of All India Radio’s news SMS service has crossed the six lakh mark.

An official statement released said registration for free AIR News on SMS service of the News Services Division (NSD) of All India Radio (AIR) has crossed six lakh.

The SMS service in English was launched on September 9, 2013 and the database reached to about three lakh by August, 2014, the statement said.

NSD started sending news headlines through SMS in nine more languages in September and October, 2014 and testing for six more languages is almost complete, it added.

In September 2014, the free news SMS service was extended to Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Dogri and Nepali. Within a short span of a month, nearly one lakh people registered for the service.

Four more regional languages namely Gujarati, Tamil, Malayalam, and Assamese were added to the SMS service in October, 2014, the statement added.

“In this service, NSD has been providing national and international news headlines through SMSes in 16 languages namely Gujarati, Assamese, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Dogri, Sanskrit, Nepali, English, Bengali, Odia, Urdu, Punjabi, Arunachali and Kashmiri,” the statement said.

As a next step, NSD is planning to expand the service to its Regional News Units (RNUs) for giving local news in regional languages on SMS, it added.

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