In order to take advantage of its huge network across India, The All India Radio has launched a free SMS news service to its subscribers.
The SMSs will have updates on the latest news across all topics. Indian Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari launched this service on Monday.
To avail the free service, anyone in India can send SMS ‘AIRNEWS’ <space> ‘their name’ to 08082080820 or give a missed call to the above number to get the services.
The AIR expects to garner more than five lakh subscribers by the end of this month to avail the SMS news services. This service was initially tested for a period of six months with two lakh subscribers. Now after the officials are confirmed that its working fine and they are confident of serving more subscribers, the service was thrown open to all.
AIR plans to send free SMSs with news updates and even public utility service messages.
All India Radio plans to earn the revenue and cost of this service by sending Government ministries and departments SMSs who want to publicize their utility message along with the news updates. “The resource generated through such public utility schemes will enable the News Services Division of AIR to bear the cost incurred towards generating such SMSes,” said a official statement.
The Indian UPA government which is eying the 2014 polls with great anticipation has launched a campaign to publicise its popular projects. In order for people to know of their good work they are advertising in TV and Radio’s.
Tiwari revealed the details of the campaign, he said, “32,612 audio-visual spots have been telecast in phase-I and over 36,000 in phase-II so far.
“Over 7.50 lakh subscribers have been reached via Twitter and Facebook. In the print space also, over 27,000 insertions have been done in over 700 papers in phase I and II. Community radio has also been included in the campaign.”