In a move to create conducive digital environment throughout India, especially in rural belt, the Government will come out with a draft notification where every mobile set, mostly feature cell phones with at least three languages, will soon be mandatory for all mobile manufacturers in the country.
“The Government will soon come out with notification that will mandate handset makers to enable one local language besides Hindi and English. A draft notification is ready with the Government and it will be released soon,” said Ajay Kumar, Additional Secretary in the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) in an event here.
When asked about the time frame to release the mandate, Kumar said, “We have already sent it to the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and waiting for their report very soon. We hope it will be out in a month or so.”
This move comes at a time when the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Government is aggressively making its effort in Jandhan, Aadhar and Mobile (JAM) initiatives throughout the country, mostly in rural areas. “This draft notification for the mobile makers will not only help increase their revenues but also take them forward to open a dual market for the sector,” he added.
Six months ago, the Government had a thorough discussion with mobile manufacturing companies to make it a success. “Now the time has come and through this initiative we will get people enable to make their work easy in effective way. It will help them in all digital and cashless transactions which will be cost effective, transparent, traceable and environment-friendly as well,” he said.
Meanwhile, mobile maker lava Mobile launched a low cost as well as affordable Rs 1,500 feature phone - KKT Ultra+ Union - which supports 22 local Indian languages, as a first in a Government initiative to enable all Indians to use mobile phones with vernacular languages. The company, however, said more than 70 per cent of the company’s feature phone portfolio will have the local language capability.
Seeking to bridge the communication gap from the multitude of languages in India, the new feature phone to be available in the market soon, will support for 23 Indian languages including English and most specifically Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Manipuri, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Users will be able to send and receive SMS messages in all 23 languages.
The company also said it has also reached manufacturing capacity of 1 million phones a month, locally. And it will invest Rs 500 crore over the next couple of years to increase local production and will employ more than 4,000 people.