Nokia, Hutch Offer SMS in 9 Indian Languages

Hutchison Essar and Nokia have announced an alliance in India, to offer a nation-wide SMS service in 9 regional languages. The service called INDISMS is offered to prepaid and post paid Hutch customers, using Nokia phones, enabling them to send and receive SMS in Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil and Telugu. The application is free of cost, though the customer will be charged Rs.1.60 for downloading the 'INDISMS' application.

Devinder Kishore, director marketing, Nokia India, said, "At Nokia, we are committed to connecting people. The launch of INDISMS with Hutch is a key step to connect with the diverse Indian audience and further enhance the Nokia users" experience by allowing them to communicate in their native languages. Currently over 30 Nokia phones are equipped to support 9 Indian languages using this application. Going forward, our endeavour will be to expand this service to an even wider range of our phones.

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Hutch customers can access the service by sending INDISMS as an SMS to 123 and downloading through the WAP link. Users can also download the application by logging on to PlanetHutch and clicking on the INDISMS link.