News Service Division’s free AIR news on SMS service

AIR free News SMS service was started with an objective to provide free of cost news updates to the people by sending 2-3 headlines through SMS three times a day. It was launched in September 2013 in English and got a subscriber base of over 3 lakhs. In September 2014 with an aim to provide news to people in Hindi and regional languages, the service was launched in Hindi, Nepali, Sanskrit, Dogri and Marathi. The regional language news service got a great response from various parts of the country. Thus it was decided to expand the service in more regional languages. In October 2014 Gujarati, Tamil, Malayalam and Assamese were added taking total number of languages to 10. Within a month around 1 lakh more people started availing the service and subscriber base increased to more than 5 lakhs. The news SMS service was started in 6 more languages (Odia, Bengali, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Urdu and Arunachali) on pilot basis.

Presently more than 5.8 lakh people are getting news updates through AIR free news SMS service in 16 languages. The news updates are provided in the language opted by the individual during registration. The registration process has been kept simple for the convenience of the subscribers. One can register either through SMS or through online application by filing a form.