The Hindu : New Delhi News : A new mobile service from MTNL

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 28, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

A new mobile service from MTNL

Staff Reporter

It offers customers maps and locations in six metros,160 cities

NEW DELHI: To ensure that it is not left behind in the stiff competition among cellular service providers in the Capital, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited on Tuesday launched a unique map-based location service -- "Maps and Directions". The first-of-its-kind service in Delhi will offer to MTNL customers maps and locations in six metros and 160 cities by using their GPRS (general packet radio service) handsets.

The new value-added service can be broadly divided into three categories -- eCity, eTrips and eLocation. While eCity is a comprehensive city guide that will give subscribers maps of different parts of the city besides informing about important entertainment destinations, dining spots, emergency services like police stations and hospitals, 24-hour medical shops, petrol pumps and ATM centres; eTrips will help a user find directions, distances and route maps between all major cities of India. It will also provide detailed information about places of tourist interest in the destination city.

Another important part of the package is eLocation service that will display interactive location maps, customised directions and other contact information related to the location by directly downloading maps from website www.mapmyindia.com, a leading map based Internet and mobile applications company that is providing content and technical support to the State-owned telecommunication company. In this service, a subscriber can have his personalised ID and than help in searching various locations as per his need.

Claiming that it would be a unique service that would immensely help subscribers, particularly those who are lost in a city or want to find exact route between two cities, MTNL (Delhi) Executive Director A K Arora said for availing of the service, subscribers could either pay Rs.50 as monthly charges or Rs.20 for three-day subscription. "Subscribers will have to pay additional download charge of 10 paise per kbps. That means for downloading a map that takes tree to four seconds, a subscriber will have to pay just around 50 paise," he elaborated, adding that MTNL subscribers would have no problem while roaming as their roaming partner -- Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited -- too was offering excellent GPRS service across India.

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